Re: trying directories in path one by one

[Mandar Mitra <mandar.mitra@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark J. Reed wrote (Wed, Nov 04, 2026 at 08:54:59AM -0500):
> What do you mean by "fails"? Zsh will execute the first one that is, well,
> executable. It doesn't run it and then check the exit code and keep looking
> through the PATH for another one to try. Perhaps you could be very specific
> about exactly what you are seeing?

Sorry, my bad. What I'm seeing is that if execve (?) fails on the virtualenv pip with a bad interpreter error, then /bin/pip runs. With 2>&1, I see

zsh: ..../junk/bin/pip: bad interpreter: .... /junk/bin/python: no such file or directory

followed by the output from (I'm guessing) /bin/pip.

I'd like things to stop at the bad interpreter error, so that I don't miss it amidst all the other output.

Is this configurable?

Thanks,
Mandar.


> On Wed, Nov 4, 2026 at 8:34 AM Mandar Mitra <mandar.mitra@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > If I have a command that is available in multiple directories in PATH,
> > zsh's behaviour suggests that it tries them in turn until one succeeds. Is
> > there an option / environment variable / similar that I can use to turn
> > this off?
> >
> > For example, pip could be available from both a virtualenv and the system
> > location (/bin). If the virtualenv pip fails, I'd like to know right away,
> > without the stderr messages getting lost in the voluminous output from
> > /bin/pip.
> >
> > I looked in the FAQ and man zshoptions, and didn't find a direct answer to
> > this question (HASH_CMDS seemed tangentally related, though). I also asked
> > Claude, which pointed me to Src/exec.c in the zsh source, but said it
> > didn't know of a zsh option that disables the fallthrough.
> >
> > Many thanks for any pointers, suggestions, etc.
> > Mandar.