.\" $OpenBSD: locate.1,v 1.27 2008/07/26 10:57:09 jmc Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin. .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 .\" $Id: locate.1,v 1.27 2008/07/26 10:57:09 jmc Exp $ .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: July 26 2008 $ .Dt LOCATE 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm locate .Nd find filenames quickly .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm locate .Op Fl bcimSs .Op Fl d Ar database .Op Fl l Ar limit .Ar pattern ... .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified .Ar pattern . The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily), and contains the pathnames of all files which are publicly accessible. .Pp Shell globbing and quoting characters .Pf ( Ql * , .Ql \&? , .Ql \e , .Ql [ , and .Ql \&] ) may be used in .Ar pattern , although they will have to be escaped from the shell. Preceding any character with a backslash .Pq Ql \e eliminates any special meaning which it may have. The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly, including slashes .Pq Ql / . .Pp As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters .Pq Dq foo is matched as though it were .Dq *foo* . .Pp Historically, .Nm stores only characters between 32 and 127. The current implementation stores all characters except newline .Pq Ql \en and NUL .Pq Ql \e0 . The 8-bit character support does not waste extra space for plain .Tn ASCII file names. Characters less than 32 or greater than 127 are stored as 2 bytes. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl b For each entry in the database, perform the search on the last component of path. .It Fl c Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names. .It Fl d Ar database Search in .Ar database instead of the default file name database. Multiple .Fl d options are allowed. Each additional .Fl d option adds the specified database to the list of databases to be searched. .Pp .Ar database may be a colon-separated list of databases. An empty database name is a reference to the default database. .Pp .Dl $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo .Pp will first search for the string .Dq foo in .Pa $HOME/lib/mydb and then in .Pa /var/db/locate.database . .Pp .Dl $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo .Pp will first search for the string .Dq foo in .Pa $HOME/lib/mydb and then in .Pa /var/db/locate.database and then in .Pa /cdrom/locate.database . .Pp .Dl $ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern .Pp is the same as .Pp .Dl $ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern .Pp or .Pp .Dl $ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern .Pp If .Ql \- is given as the .Ar database name, standard input will be read instead. For example, you can compress your database and use: .Pp .Dl $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern .Pp This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU, little RAM and slow I/O. .Sy Note: You can only use .Em one pattern for stdin. .It Fl i Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database. .It Fl l Ar limit Limit output to a specific number of files and exit. .It Fl m Use .Xr mmap 2 instead of the .Xr stdio 3 library. This is the default behavior. It performs better in most cases. .It Fl S Print some statistics about the database and exit. .It Fl s Use the .Xr stdio 3 library instead of .Xr mmap 2 . .El .Sh ENVIRONMENT .Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact .It Ev LOCATE_PATH Path to the locate database if set and not empty; ignored if the .Fl d option was specified. .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb -compact .It Pa /etc/weekly script that starts the database rebuild .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb script to update the locate database .It Pa /var/db/locate.database locate database .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr find 1 , .Xr fnmatch 3 , .Xr locate.updatedb 8 , .Xr weekly 8 .Rs .%A Woods, James A. .%D 1983 .%T "Finding Files Fast" .%J ";login" .%V 8:1 .%P pp. 8-10 .Re .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in .Bx 4.4 . .Sh BUGS .Nm may fail to list some files that are present, or may list files that have been removed from the system. This is because .Nm only reports files that are present in a periodically reconstructed database (typically rebuilt once a week by the .Xr weekly 8 script). Use .Xr find 1 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature. .Pp The .Nm database is built by user .Dq nobody using .Xr find 1 . This will skip directories which are not readable by user .Dq nobody , group .Dq nobody , or the world. E.g., if your home directory is not world-readable, your files will .Em not appear in the database. .Pp The .Nm database is not byte order independent. It is not possible to share the databases between machines with different byte order. The current .Nm implementation understands databases in host byte order or network byte order. So a little-endian machine can't understand a locate database which was built on a big-endian machine.