Can I use `which` command for partial match?

Question

I want to find all programs with name like "gcc", "gcc-4.2", "gcc-4.9" and so on.

To find all binaries I tried with which -a gcc*.

But "*" is not recognized as 'any' with which command.

Is there way to find all programs in PATH environment variable by pattern match?

Answer 1

There is a BASH built-in command compgen which can be used to list all commands, functions, aliases and built-ins.

compgen -abck | grep "gcc"

---

Parameters: help compgen

compgen:
[-abcdefgjksuv] 
[-o option]
[-A action]
[-G globpat]
[-W wordlist]
[-F function]
[-C command]
[-X filterpat]
[-P prefix]
[-S suffix]
[word]

Answer 2

Here is a quick and dirty sample script to do what you want in practice:

#!/bin/sh
IFS=:
for i in $PATH; do
    for j in "$i"/$1; do
        [ -f "$j" ] && [ -x "$j" ] && printf '%s\n' "$j"
    done
done

Save this as e.g. whichglob and make it executable. Sample run:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
$ ./whichglob grep*
/usr/bin/grepdiff
/usr/bin/grep-excuses
/usr/bin/grepjar
/bin/grep

Actually all the functionality in which (-a, exit statuses, multiple file match inputs) can be easily added in this shell script context as well, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader.