One of the best ways to learn a language is via building equivalent Linux commands using the language of your choice.

which is my all-time favourite command to see if the binary is present on the server or not. You can see which usage as shown below,

$ which kubectl-eks
/Users/surajnarwade/.krew/bin/kubectl-eks

We simply pass the binary name to which command and it will give us the absolute path to the binary.

| Here’s the man page for the which command: https://linux.die.net/man/1/which

Now let’s try to write it in Golang,

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "os"
    "os/exec"
)

func main() {
    path, err := exec.LookPath(os.Args[1])
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("Error: %s", err)
    }
    fmt.Printf("%s is available at %s\n", os.Args[1], path)
}

Let’s run the program,

$ go run main.go kubectl-eks
kubectl-eks is available at /Users/surajnarwade/.krew/bin/kubectl-eks

Let’s understand the program step by step,

  • In the following step, we are passing an argument to the program and we are using it as an input to exec.Lookpath the function, Here’s the doc link for the function.
  path, err := exec.LookPath(os.Args[1])
  • then we simply handle the error and print the path variable.

Now, in a similar way, you can try other commands using standard Golang libraries. Let me know in the comments if you tried any.

Happy Coding!!!