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I want to check if a given command exists in bash and I care only about the native commands of the bash and not the scripts written by the user. When I refer to native commands I mean all those commands that are generally available to a user.

There are two commands

command -v
type

that can be used to check if the command exists. But it also returns a true for user written scripts whereas I want to restrict myself just to the inbuilt commands.

Note: I am not just trying to distinguish between a bash builtin and other commands because

type -t touch

gives file as the type, but this is a command available to the user by default. But if the user writes a script and then tries to run it then I would like to filter that.

Any help is appreciated.

Sachin
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    The set of bash built-ins is fixed, finite, and documented. Why do you need runtime checks? You could just test for bash version with something like BASH_VERSION or BASH_VERSINFO. – jw013 Jul 09 '12 at 19:17
  • By “in bash”, do you mean builtins? For example, kill and set are builtins; bash and ls are not. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 09 '12 at 22:06
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    @jw013 I thought Sachin might be trying to distinguish between standard commands such as ls and custom scripts. In which case the answer is that there's no such distinction. Sachin, if that's what you were asking, there may be a way to do whatever you're trying to do, but you should tell us what you're trying to accomplish without focusing on a dommed approach. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 09 '12 at 23:15
  • @Gilles: you put it right I am trying to distinguish between any custom script written by a user and any other command that we run from bash. The command can be builtins or as you pointed out ls and bash are not builtins but I will lick to consider them as valid and any script as invalid – Sachin Jul 10 '12 at 14:03
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    @Sachin You'll have to define more specifically what you consider invalid (or what you want to exclude). Would a script placed in /usr/bin by root be considered a user script? What about a binary installed into /usr/local/bin? Would command -p/setting PATH to some default value suffice? – jw013 Jul 10 '12 at 17:05
  • Yes any script written by the user would be valid but not any script written by the user. I did not understand what you mean by command -p/setting PATH to some default value – Sachin Jul 10 '12 at 18:59
  • @Sachin: "any script written by the user would be valid but not any script written by the user" seems contradictory to me –  Sep 17 '12 at 13:41
  • (Really it's a duplicate of How to test if a command is installed?, but that's a duplicate of the question linked above, albeit a non-obvious dupe.) – Wildcard Apr 03 '16 at 06:51
  • How to check if a program exists from a Bash script? –  Mar 26 '19 at 02:57

1 Answers1

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Not sure about returning true for just a shell builtin, but type -t will return the type of 'command', including "builtin":

if [ "$(type -t help)" = "builtin" ]; then
    echo "Help is a builtin command."
fi

Run help type for more information.

phemmer
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Arcege
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