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How do I get the absolute path to a given binary and store it to a variable?

What is the equivalent to the following for Linux Bash in Windows Powershell?

user@disp985:~$ path=`which gpg`
user@disp985:~$ echo $path
/usr/bin/gpg
user@disp985:~$ 

user@disp985:~$ $path
gpg: keybox '/home/user/.gnupg/pubring.kbx' created
gpg: WARNING: no command supplied.  Trying to guess what you mean ...
gpg: Go ahead and type your message ...

In Windows Powershell, there's Get-Command, but the output is hardly trivial to parse programmatically for a script.

PS C:\Users\user> Get-Command gpg.exe
 
CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Application     gpg.exe                                            2.2.28.... C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\..\GnuP...
 
 
PS C:\Users\user>

How can I programmatically determine the full path to a given binary in Windows Powershell, store it to a variable, and execute it?

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1 Answer 1

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For the example command provided by the OP question:

PS C:\Users\user> Get-Command gpg.exe
 
CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Application     gpg.exe                                            2.2.28.... C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\..\GnuP...
 
 
PS C:\Users\user>

You can extract the "Source" field with the following syntax

PS C:\Users\user> $(Get-Command gpg.exe).Source
C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\..\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe

Then you can also store it to a variable and execute it with an ampersand (&) preceding the variable

PS C:\Users\user> $path=$(Get-Command gpg.exe).Source
PS C:\Users\user> echo $path
C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\..\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe
PS C:\Users\user> & $path
gpg: WARNING: no command supplied.  Trying to guess what you mean ...
gpg: Go ahead and type your message ...
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3 Comments

If Get-Command is able to provide an absolute path for gpg.exe, then you actually don't need it. You can call it directly with & gpg.exe or just gpg.
This question is intentionally general to map which usage to the powershell equivalent. However, this is a bad idea in bash because users may override gpg with an alias that may yield indeterministic results from scripts. In powershell, my use-case is executing a a binary that exists in many different places on Windows. I want to use a specific path, if possible. Then fall-back on others, if needed and possible.
Nice, but note that $(...) is only ever needed in two cases: (a) to embed entire statement(s), notably loops and conditionals, in another statement, and (b) to embed an expression, command, or statement(s) inside "...", an expandable (interpolating) string. Just (...) is enough to embed a single command or expression in a statement (and even that isn't needed on the RHS of a variable assignment). While not likely, the unnecessary use of $(...) can have side effects - see this answer.

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