Question

What is the best method in bash to check to se if a c library is installed?

Per comments, to be more clear:
I run an install script that looks for the libexpat header file (expat.h)
Currently it is doing this via:

if ! locate libexpat.so 1> /dev/null; then

However, it should be looking for expat.h, but this still required the mlocate db to be updated first.

Any better way?

Answer 1

The best one I found was with @cnicutar’s comment, thanks.
Specifically to do this in a bash script:

expat_loc=`whereis -b expat.h | cut -c8-`
if [[ -e "$expat_loc" ]]; then
  #Something something
fi;