what is the 'what' command on AIX under LINUX

Question

I am used to use what to find out some version string in my program, which is normal defined as a string in the c++ code, starting with "@(#)".

Now I cannot find it in Linux. Can anyone tell me what I am supposed to do? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

The what command is part of the Source Code Control System (SCCS), which is not commonly available on Linux (if there is a Linux version at all). You can try to emulate it with the strings command:

strings a.out | fgrep '@(#)'

Reimplementations of what are available in CSSC (an SCCS-to-modern version control conversion package) and in BSD (source code).