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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: which/type & built-ins
Message-ID: <11886@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 5 Jan 90 03:11:50 GMT
References: <1297@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <1297@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>This certainly looks to me as though "type if" SHOULD succeed, and
>"type type" _does_.  So why does "type while" say "while not found"
>rather than "while is a shell builtin"?

"while" is neither a command nor a builtin; it's a keyword in the shell
programming language.

"type" does have some deficiencies, which is why in the BRL Bourne shell
we implemented the 8th Edition UNIX "whatis" and "builtin" commands.