How can I check if a program exists from a Bash script?

Question

How would I validate that a program exists, in a way that will either return an error and exit, or continue with the script?

It seems like it should be easy, but it\

Answer 1

My setup for a Debian server:

I had the problem when multiple packages contained the same name.

For example apache2. So this was my solution:

function _apt_install() {
    apt-get install -y $1 > /dev/null
}

function _apt_install_norecommends() {
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends $1 > /dev/null
}
function _apt_available() {
    if [ `apt-cache search $1 | grep -o "$1" | uniq | wc -l` = "1" ]; then
        echo "Package is available : $1"
        PACKAGE_INSTALL="1"
    else
        echo "Package $1 is NOT available for install"
        echo  "We can not continue without this package..."
        echo  "Exitting now.."
        exit 0
    fi
}
function _package_install {
    _apt_available $1
    if [ "${PACKAGE_INSTALL}" = "1" ]; then
        if [ "$(dpkg-query -l $1 | tail -n1 | cut -c1-2)" = "ii" ]; then
             echo  "package is already_installed: $1"
        else
            echo  "installing package : $1, please wait.."
            _apt_install $1
            sleep 0.5
        fi
    fi
}

function _package_install_no_recommends {
    _apt_available $1
    if [ "${PACKAGE_INSTALL}" = "1" ]; then
        if [ "$(dpkg-query -l $1 | tail -n1 | cut -c1-2)" = "ii" ]; then
             echo  "package is already_installed: $1"
        else
            echo  "installing package : $1, please wait.."
            _apt_install_norecommends $1
            sleep 0.5
        fi
    fi
}