Viewing/Changing App paths used by `open -a foo.app ...` When using open -a iTerm.app SOMEPATH from a shell-script or Emacs eshell command, it appears to launch a different instance of iTerm than the one in /Applications/iTerm.app that I'd expect.

Explicitly specifying the app path like:

open -a /Applications/iTerm.app SOMEPATH works as expected.

This leads me to suspect that there's a lookup table/database somewhere (probably part of LaunchServices) that's mapping bare .app names to an on-disk path, and it's somehow confused as to which it should be using (I do have multiple instance of iTerm on disk, from when I've been playing around with compiling from source. None are in my $PATH, however.)

Any suggestions on how to find what on-disk path an 
open -a &lt;non-absolute .app name&gt; will use, and ideally, how it can be changed?
If you type the following commando:


  open -R iTerm.app


it will reveal the iTerm.app you're currently selecting in Finder.

If you type 


  open -a /applications/iTerm.app


it will open the iTerm.app in the /Applications folder as you said.

If you type


  open -a iTerm.app


it will open iTerm.app in the current location. (you can type ls to see the contents of the current folder, or use the above method (-R)

As a general hint, please type 


  open --help


to see the methods/commands available you can use.