What shell am I in?

Question

Is there a command to identify the name/type of current shell, the path to the shell binary, and the version of the shell?

I don\'t need all of that, but the more I

Answer 1

This shows me more reliable result.

ls -la /bin/sh

Answer 2

The command or path to the currently running shell is stored in the environment variable $0. To see its value, use:

echo $0

This outputs either your currently running shell or the path to your currently running shell, depending on how it was invoked. Some processing might be required:

prompt:~$ echo $0
/bin/bash
prompt:~$ sh
sh-4.0$ echo $0
sh
sh-4.0$ exit
exit
prompt:~$ /bin/sh
sh-4.0$ echo $0
/bin/sh
sh-4.0$

The $SHELL environment variable contains the user's preferred shell, not necessarily the currently running shell.