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What is the best way to check if an executable exists for `std::process::Command`?

October 10, 2022

I want to create a std::process::Command and check whether an executable actually exists at that location before actually spawning the Command later. What would be the pragmatic way to do this?

I have this code:

let c = std::process::Command::new("my_exe");
// something here
c.spawn().unwrap();

I want to be able to validate the my_exe path when creating the Command and then spawn way later.

>Solution :

If you want to check if a file is present in the working directory, you can use Path::exists, as described in How to check whether a path exists?.

Also, Command::spawn() takes a mutable reference to self so c needs to be mutable.

use std::path::Path;
use std::process::Command;

if Path::new("PATH_TO_EXECUTABLE").exists() {
    let mut c = Command::new("PATH_TO_EXECUTABLE");
    // do something
    c.spawn().unwrap();
}