How to check if a program exists from a Bash scrip

Question

How would I validate that a program exists, in a way that will either return an error and exit, or continue with the script?

It seems like it should be easy, but it's been stumping me.

Answer 1

There's a ton of options here but I was surprised no quick one-liners, this is what I used at the beginning of my scripts: [[ "$(command -v mvn)" ]] || { echo "mvn is not installed" 1>&2 ; exit 1; } [[ "$(command -v java)" ]] || { echo "java is not installed" 1>&2 ; exit 1; }

this is based on the selected answer here and another source (and me playing around a little).

hope this will be handy for others.

Answer 2

I use this because it's very easy:

if [ `LANG=C type example 2>/dev/null|wc -l` = 1 ];then echo exists;else echo "not exists";fi

or

if [ `LANG=C type example 2>/dev/null|wc -l` = 1 ];then
echo exists
else echo "not exists"
fi

It uses shell builtin and program echo status to stdout and nothing to stderr by the other hand if a command is not found, it echos status only to stderr.

Answer 3

To use hash, as @lhunath suggests, in a bash script:

hash foo &> /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
    echo >&2 "foo not found."
fi

This script runs hash and then checks if the exit code of the most recent command, the value stored in $?, is equal to 1. If hash doesn't find foo, the exit code will be 1. If foo is present, the exit code will be 0.

&> /dev/null redirects standard error and standard output from hash so that it doesn't appear onscreen and echo >&2 writes the message to standard error.

Answer 4

my setup for a debian server. i had a the problem when multiple packages contains the same name. for example apache2. so this was my solution.

function _apt_install() {
    apt-get install -y $1 > /dev/null
}

function _apt_install_norecommends() {
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends $1 > /dev/null
}
function _apt_available() {
    if [ `apt-cache search $1 | grep -o "$1" | uniq | wc -l` = "1" ]; then
        echo "Package is available : $1"
        PACKAGE_INSTALL="1"
    else
        echo "Package $1 is NOT available for install"
        echo  "We can not continue without this package..."
        echo  "Exitting now.."
        exit 0
    fi
}
function _package_install {
    _apt_available $1
    if [ "${PACKAGE_INSTALL}" = "1" ]; then
        if [ "$(dpkg-query -l $1 | tail -n1 | cut -c1-2)" = "ii" ]; then
             echo  "package is already_installed: $1"
        else
            echo  "installing package : $1, please wait.."
            _apt_install $1
            sleep 0.5
        fi
    fi
}

function _package_install_no_recommends {
    _apt_available $1
    if [ "${PACKAGE_INSTALL}" = "1" ]; then
        if [ "$(dpkg-query -l $1 | tail -n1 | cut -c1-2)" = "ii" ]; then
             echo  "package is already_installed: $1"
        else
            echo  "installing package : $1, please wait.."
            _apt_install_norecommends $1
            sleep 0.5
        fi
    fi
}

Answer 5

I second the use of "command -v". E.g. like this:

md=$(command -v mkdirhier) ; alias md=${md:=mkdir}  # bash

emacs="$(command -v emacs) -nw" || emacs=nano
alias e=$emacs
[[ -z $(command -v jed) ]] && alias jed=$emacs

Answer 6

Script

#!/bin/bash

# Commands found in the hash table are checked for existence before being
# executed and non-existence forces a normal PATH search.
shopt -s checkhash

function exists() {
 local mycomm=$1; shift || return 1

 hash $mycomm 2>/dev/null || \
 printf "\xe2\x9c\x98 [ABRT]: $mycomm: command does not exist\n"; return 1;
}
readonly -f exists

exists notacmd
exists bash
hash
bash -c 'printf "Fin.\n"'

Result

✘ [ABRT]: notacmd: command does not exist
hits    command
   0    /usr/bin/bash
Fin.