“which in ruby”: Checking if program exists in $PATH from ruby

Question

my scripts rely heavily on external programs and scripts. I need to be sure that a program I need to call exists. Manually, I\'d check this using \'which\' in the commandlin

Answer 1

This is an improved version based on @mislav's answer. This would allow any type of path input and strictly follows how cmd.exe chooses the file to execute in Windows.

# which(cmd) :: string or nil
#
# Multi-platform implementation of "which".
# It may be used with UNIX-based and DOS-based platforms.
#
# The argument can not only be a simple command name but also a command path
# may it be relative or complete.
#
def which(cmd)
  raise ArgumentError.new("Argument not a string: #{cmd.inspect}") unless cmd.is_a?(String)
  return nil if cmd.empty?
  case RbConfig::CONFIG['host_os']
  when /cygwin/
    exts = nil
  when /dos|mswin|^win|mingw|msys/
    pathext = ENV['PATHEXT']
    exts = pathext ? pathext.split(';').select{ |e| e[0] == '.' } : ['.com', '.exe', '.bat']
  else
    exts = nil
  end
  if cmd[File::SEPARATOR] or (File::ALT_SEPARATOR and cmd[File::ALT_SEPARATOR])
    if exts
      ext = File.extname(cmd)
      if not ext.empty? and exts.any?{ |e| e.casecmp(ext).zero? } \
      and File.file?(cmd) and File.executable?(cmd)
        return File.absolute_path(cmd)
      end
      exts.each do |ext|
        exe = "#{cmd}#{ext}"
        return File.absolute_path(exe) if File.file?(exe) and File.executable?(exe)
      end
    else
      return File.absolute_path(cmd) if File.file?(cmd) and File.executable?(cmd)
    end
  else
    paths = ENV['PATH']
    paths = paths ? paths.split(File::PATH_SEPARATOR).select{ |e| File.directory?(e) } : []
    if exts
      ext = File.extname(cmd)
      has_valid_ext = (not ext.empty? and exts.any?{ |e| e.casecmp(ext).zero? })
      paths.unshift('.').each do |path|
        if has_valid_ext
          exe = File.join(path, "#{cmd}")
          return File.absolute_path(exe) if File.file?(exe) and File.executable?(exe)
        end
        exts.each do |ext|
          exe = File.join(path, "#{cmd}#{ext}")
          return File.absolute_path(exe) if File.file?(exe) and File.executable?(exe)
        end
      end
    else
      paths.each do |path|
        exe = File.join(path, cmd)
        return File.absolute_path(exe) if File.file?(exe) and File.executable?(exe)
      end
    end
  end
  nil
end