Which command shows if /usr/bin is in the current shell search path?

cat PATH attempts to read a file named PATH in the current directory, not the environment variable, and no such file typically exists.

The echo command outputs text or variable values to standard output, and $PATH is the correct shell syntax to dereference the PATH environment variable in Bash and other POSIX-compatible shells. Running 'echo $PATH' will print the colon-separated list of directories in the search path, allowing you to confirm whether /usr/bin is included.

The %PATH% syntax is specific to Windows Command Prompt; in Linux shells, % is not used to reference environment variables.

cat $PATH would attempt to use the value of $PATH as a filename to read, which would fail or produce garbage output since PATH contains directory paths separated by colons.

echo %PATH% uses Windows CMD syntax and is not valid in Linux shells; it would literally print the string '%PATH%' rather than the variable value.