how do I find where a executable is present in macosx?

Question

I have a command called youtube-dl .. but dont know where it is installed.. i can run it from shell.. how do i find where it is installed ? which youtube-dl doesnt say anything..

Answer 1

Bash has a command that will show whether a command is an alias, a function or an executable in your path (and, if so, where):

type -a youtube-dl

It's much better than which which doesn't include aliases or functions.

Answer 2

If you can't find it with which (or whereis) then it could be:

• a function defined in .bashrc or .profile (or some other file the shell loads on startup or login)
• an alias defined in one of the above files.

You can search your environment for youtube-dl:

$ set | grep youtube-dl

or save it to some file and load it into a texteditor:

$ set >myenv
$ open -a textedit myenv

and for the aliases:

$ alias >myalias

or

$ alias | grep youtube-dl

Answer 3

Have you tried

whereis youtube-dl

?

Otherwise you could just search for it:

find / -name youtube-dl