Find path of an executable in vim

Question

On some machines I'm using an external executable to format text (it's named 'par'). Therefore I'd like to detect if the executable is installed.

Edit: I just want to detect if the executable is available in my .vimrc itself. So I prefer internal functions over external utils like 'which'. Prince Goulash's solution is already very helpful and I'm going with it, despite I'd prefer finding the exact path. Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use the vimscript function executable() , which returns 1 if its argument exists and is executable, and 0 otherwise. It doesn't return the path of the file, though. See help executable for more info.

Answer 2

In linux, I'd use which :

:!which par

If you want to put it into the file, try this:

:r !which par

Edit: Actually, hash might be the better tool to use.

Answer 3

in unix...

whereis par

should return a path, if it is executable by the current user