How to find absolute path of a command

[eur0dad]

I'm trying to write general code for finding/modifying a bash script, but the only thing is that it could be in many different places, and I don't want to modify the wrong one.

Say, for example, that I call the command "java", and an exe is sitting in /sbin/ and one is sitting in /usr/sbin/

Is there a command which identifies which the machine is pointing to without looking at a .profile?

[devils casper]

which <command>

[bigtomrodney]

The commands are executed in the order of the $PATH variable

tom@btrprime:~> echo $PATH
/home/tom/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/usr/games:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/lib/mit/sbin
tom@btrprime:~>

So if I created a script in /home/tom/bin called 'firefox' which launched firefox with some custom switches, it would override the one in /usr/bin .