[Chapter 44] 44.21 Picking a Name for a New Command
Author: Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly & Mike Loukides
Date: 1998-08-04T21:54:05Z

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| Chapter 44 Shell Programming for the Uninitiated |

## 44.21 Picking a Name for a New Command

When you write a new program or shell script, you'll probably want to be sure that its name doesn't conflict with any other commands on the system. For instance, you might wonder whether there's a command named tscan. You can check by typing one of the commands in the following example. If you get output (besides an error) from one of them, there's probably already a command with the same name. (The type command works on ksh, bash and many Bourne shells; I've shown it with a currency sign (`$`) prompt.)

    which

    whereis

    alias
    % man 1 tscan
    No manual entry for tscan in section 1.
    % which tscan
    no tscan in . /xxx/ehuser/bin /usr/bin/X11 /usr/local/bin ...
    % whereis tscan
    tscan:
    % alias tscan
    %

    $ type tscan
    tscan not found

- JP

44.20 test: Testing Files and Strings |  | 44.22 Finding a Program Name; Multiple Program Names