How can I check if a program exists from a Bash script?

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\

Answer 1

The which command might be useful. man which

It returns 0 if the executable is found and returns 1 if it's not found or not executable:

NAME

       which - locate a command

SYNOPSIS

       which [-a] filename ...

DESCRIPTION

       which returns the pathnames of the files which would
       be executed in the current environment, had its
       arguments been given as commands in a strictly
       POSIX-conformant shell. It does this by searching
       the PATH for executable files matching the names
       of the arguments.

OPTIONS

       -a     print all matching pathnames of each argument

EXIT STATUS

       0      if all specified commands are 
              found and executable

       1      if one or more specified commands is nonexistent
              or not executable

       2      if an invalid option is specified

The nice thing about which is that it figures out if the executable is available in the environment that which is run in - it saves a few problems...