Learning machine learning? Try my machine learning flashcards or Machine Learning with Python Cookbook.

Find Program's Location

17 Jun 2018

Use the which command to find the location of a program on the system. This is particularly useful when you are trying to figure out which version of Python is currently set in the environment.

Find Program’s Location

which python3

/home/chris/anaconda3/bin/python3

Just to prove that this is true, we can change directory, cd, to that location and find the file itself.

Go To Program’s Location

cd /home/chris/anaconda3/bin/

List Contents Of Directory

The python* selection means we are only listing files starting with python.

ls -l python*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris       9 Oct 11  2017 python -> python3.6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris       9 Oct 11  2017 python3 -> python3.6
-rwxrwxr-x 1 chris chris 3747848 Oct 11  2017 python3.6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris      17 Oct 11  2017 python3.6-config -> python3.6m-config
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris       9 Oct 11  2017 python3.6m -> python3.6
-rwxrwxr-x 1 chris chris    3249 Oct 11  2017 python3.6m-config
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris      17 Oct 11  2017 python3-config -> python3.6m-config

And there it is! Both python and python3 are symbolic links to python3.6.