path to application

Is there a simple technique in applescript to get the path to an
application, even when it is not running?

If I do

set the_app to (path to application "Bogus") as string
set bogus_path to POSIX path of the_app

it launches Bogus in order to get the path. I could live with that,
but the code doesn't seem to work unless Bogus is in /Applications.
What can I do to find the path to an application that might be in
/Applications/subdir?

Thanks,
--

Ronald Florence www.18james.com