1 .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin.
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29 .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
30 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1,v 1.16.2.5 2002/07/08 21:31:28 trhodes Exp $
37 .Nd find filenames quickly
47 program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified
49 The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily),
50 and contains the pathnames
51 of all files which are publicly accessible.
53 Shell globbing and quoting characters
62 although they will have to be escaped from the shell.
63 Preceding any character with a backslash
65 eliminates any special
66 meaning which it may have.
67 The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly,
71 As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters
73 is matched as though it were
76 Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127. The
77 current implementation store any character except newline
81 The 8-bit character support doesn't waste extra space for
82 plain ASCII file names.
83 Characters less than 32 or greater than 127
84 are stored in 2 bytes.
86 The following options are available:
89 Print some statistic about the database and exit.
91 Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names.
95 instead the default file name database.
98 options are allowed. Each additional
100 option adds the specified database to the list
101 of databases to be searched.
105 may be a colon-separated list of databases.
106 A single colon is a reference
107 to the default database.
109 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo
112 will first search string
117 .Pa /var/db/locate.database .
119 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo
122 will first search string
127 .Pa /var/db/locate.database
129 .Pa /cdrom/locate.database .
131 $ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern
136 $ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern
141 .Dq $ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern .
146 is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead.
147 For example, you can compress your database
150 $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern
153 This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow
154 I/O. Note: you can only use
158 Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database.
162 of file names and exit.
169 This is the default behavior
170 and is faster in most cases.
178 .Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact
180 path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the
182 option was specified.
185 .Bl -tag -width /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate -compact
186 .It Pa /var/db/locate.database
188 .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
189 Script to update the locate database
190 .It Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
191 Script that starts the database rebuild
198 .Xr locate.updatedb 8
202 .%T "Finding Files Fast"
210 command first appeared in
212 Many new features were
218 program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
219 list files that have been removed from the system. This is because
220 locate only reports files that are present in the database, which is
221 typically only regenerated once a week by the
222 .Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
225 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
229 database was built by user
233 which are not readable for user
239 E.g. if your HOME directory is not world-readable, all your
246 database is not byte order independent.
248 to share the databases between machines with different byte order.
251 implementation understand databases in host byte order or
252 network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size.
257 a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine