Code:
root@Slack:~# whereis gcc
gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/X11R6/bin/gcc /usr/bin/X11/gcc /usr/X11/bin/gcc /usr/libexec/gcc /usr/man/man1/gcc.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz /usr/X11/man/man1/gcc.1.gz
root@Slack:~# which gcc
/usr/bin/gcc
That returns too much. In my scripts I muck about with PATH so, these may not work for me. So, if I have a $CC set, I could run $CC with a command line param that would give me the real location of the binary -- the location that the binary was compiled to. This would mean that I would know the real path to the rest of the compile tools (not the gcc support tools, but binutils) as these are _supposed_ to be homed to the same location.