which/type & built-ins

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1297 at quintus.UUCP> ok at 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.