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1 .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin.
2 .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993
3 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
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33 .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
34 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1,v 1.16.2.5 2002/07/08 21:31:28 trhodes Exp $
35 .\" $DragonFly: src/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1,v 1.4 2006/02/17 19:39:09 swildner Exp $
36 .\"
37 .Dd June 6, 1993
38 .Dt LOCATE 1
39 .Os
40 .Sh NAME
41 .Nm locate
42 .Nd find filenames quickly
43 .Sh SYNOPSIS
44 .Nm
45 .Op Fl Scims
46 .Op Fl l Ar limit
47 .Op Fl d Ar database
48 .Ar pattern ...
49 .Sh DESCRIPTION
50 The
51 .Nm
52 program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified
53 .Ar pattern .
54 The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily),
55 and contains the pathnames
56 of all files which are publicly accessible.
57 .Pp
58 Shell globbing and quoting characters
59 .Dq ( * ,
60 .Dq \&? ,
61 .Dq \e ,
62 .Dq \&[
63 and
64 .Dq \&] )
65 may be used in
66 .Ar pattern ,
67 although they will have to be escaped from the shell.
68 Preceding any character with a backslash
69 .Pq Dq \e
70 eliminates any special
71 meaning which it may have.
72 The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly,
73 including slashes
74 .Pq Dq / .
75 .Pp
76 As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters
77 .Pq Dq foo
78 is matched as though it were
79 .Dq *foo* .
80 .Pp
81 Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127. The
82 current implementation store any character except newline
83 .Pq Sq \en
84 and NUL
85 .Pq Sq \e0 .
86 The 8-bit character support doesn't waste extra space for
87 plain ASCII file names.
88 Characters less than 32 or greater than 127
89 are stored in 2 bytes.
90 .Pp
91 The following options are available:
92 .Bl -tag -width 10n
93 .It Fl S
94 Print some statistic about the database and exit.
95 .It Fl c
96 Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names.
97 .It Fl d Ar database
98 Search in
99 .Ar database
100 instead the default file name database.
101 Multiple
102 .Fl d
103 options are allowed. Each additional
104 .Fl d
105 option adds the specified database to the list
106 of databases to be searched.
107 .Pp
108 The option
109 .Ar database
110 may be a colon-separated list of databases.
111 A single colon is a reference
112 to the default database.
113 .Bd -literal
114 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo
115 .Ed
116 .Pp
117 will first search string
118 .Dq foo
119 in
120 .Pa $HOME/lib/mydb
121 and then in
122 .Pa /var/db/locate.database .
123 .Bd -literal
124 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo
125 .Ed
126 .Pp
127 will first search string
128 .Dq foo
129 in
130 .Pa $HOME/lib/mydb
131 and then in
132 .Pa /var/db/locate.database
133 and then in
134 .Pa /cdrom/locate.database .
135 .Bd -literal
136 $ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern
137 .Ed
138 .Pp
139 is the same as
140 .Bd -literal
141 $ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern
142 .Ed
143 .Pp
144 or
145 .Bd -literal
146 .Dq $ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern .
147 .Ed
148 .Pp
149 If
150 .Ar -
151 is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead.
152 For example, you can compress your database
153 and use:
154 .Bd -literal
155 $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern
156 .Ed
157 .Pp
158 This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow
159 I/O. Note: you can only use
160 .Ar one
161 pattern for stdin.
162 .It Fl i
163 Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database.
164 .It Fl l Ar number
165 Limit output to
166 .Ar number
167 of file names and exit.
168 .It Fl m
169 Use
170 .Xr mmap 2
171 instead of the
172 .Xr stdio 3
173 library.
174 This is the default behavior
175 and is faster in most cases.
176 .It Fl s
177 Use the
178 .Xr stdio 3
179 library instead of
180 .Xr mmap 2 .
181 .El
182 .Sh ENVIRONMENT
183 .Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact
184 .It Pa LOCATE_PATH
185 path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the
186 .Fl d
187 option was specified.
188 .El
189 .Sh FILES
190 .Bl -tag -width /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate -compact
191 .It Pa /var/db/locate.database
192 locate database
193 .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
194 Script to update the locate database
195 .It Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
196 Script that starts the database rebuild
197 .El
198 .Sh SEE ALSO
199 .Xr find 1 ,
200 .Xr whereis 1 ,
201 .Xr which 1 ,
202 .Xr fnmatch 3 ,
203 .Xr locate.updatedb 8
204 .Rs
205 .%A Woods, James A.
206 .%D 1983
207 .%T "Finding Files Fast"
208 .%J ";login"
209 .%V 8:1
210 .%P pp. 8-10
211 .Re
212 .Sh HISTORY
213 The
214 .Nm
215 command first appeared in
216 .Bx 4.4 .
217 Many new features were
218 added in
219 .Fx 2.2 .
220 .Sh BUGS
221 The
222 .Nm
223 program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
224 list files that have been removed from the system. This is because
225 locate only reports files that are present in the database, which is
226 typically only regenerated once a week by the
227 .Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
228 script. Use
229 .Xr find 1
230 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
231 .Pp
232 The
233 .Nm
234 database was built by user
235 .Dq nobody .
236 .Xr find 1
237 skips directories,
238 which are not readable for user
239 .Dq nobody ,
240 group
241 .Dq nobody ,
242 or
243 world.
244 E.g. if your HOME directory is not world-readable, all your
245 files are
246 .Ar not
247 in the database.
248 .Pp
249 The
250 .Nm
251 database is not byte order independent.
252 It is not possible
253 to share the databases between machines with different byte order.
254 The current
255 .Nm
256 implementation understand databases in host byte order or
257 network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size.
258 So you can read on a
259 .Dx Ns /i386
260 machine
261 (little endian)
262 a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine
263 (big endian, net).