Re: type -aP: intentional behaviour or a bug?

[Chet Ramey]

On 12/15/22 7:18 PM, Adam Vodopjan wrote:
> Hey guys!
>
> I need to expand a command to all its locations under $PATH. For example,
> on my system /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin so for 'ls' there should be
> both /usr/bin/ls and /bin/ls listed.

OK.

> For the purpose I wanted to use either 'type -ap' or 'type -aP'. I know
> there is a difference in 'type -p' vs 'type -P':

`type -aP' is the more appropriate choice, since it forces the $PATH search.


> But I was sure '-ap' should be the same as '-aP'. Somehow I've found out
> this:

Yes, `type -aP' looks in the hash table. That's really the only difference.
It's been that way since I added it in 2001. I forget why, but it was
probably something like why force the $PATH search when it's not going to
be used when you use the name as a command. That's a long time ago, though.

If you want to force the $PATH search, remove the name from the hash
table before doing it (hash -d ls).

>    /* If the user isn't doing "-a", then we might care about
>       whether the file is present in our hash table. */
>    if (all == 0 || (dflags & CDESC_FORCE_PATH))

> So with CDESC_FORCE_PATH bit set (-P flag) it completely ignores -a flag.

No, only if it's present in the hash table.

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/