path: root/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1

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.\"	@(#)locate.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd July 23, 2004
.Dt LOCATE 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm locate
.Nd find filenames quickly
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl Scims
.Op Fl l Ar limit
.Op Fl d Ar database
.Ar pattern ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
program 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
.Dq ( * ,
.Dq \&? ,
.Dq \e ,
.Dq \&[
and
.Dq \&] )
may be used in
.Ar pattern ,
although they will have to be escaped from the shell.
Preceding any character with a backslash
.Pq Dq \e
eliminates any special
meaning which it may have.
The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly,
including slashes
.Pq Dq / .
.Pp
As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters
.Pq Dq foo
is matched as though it were
.Dq *foo* .
.Pp
Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127.
The
current implementation store any character except newline
.Pq Sq \en
and NUL
.Pq Sq \e0 .
The 8-bit character support doesn't waste extra space for
plain ASCII file names.
Characters less than 32 or greater than 127
are stored in 2 bytes.
.Pp
The following options are available:
.Bl -tag -width 10n
.It Fl S
Print some statistic about the database and exit.
.It Fl c
Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names.
.It Fl d Ar database
Search in
.Ar database
instead 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
The option
.Ar database
may be a colon-separated list of databases.
A single colon is a reference
to the default database.
.Bd -literal
$ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo
.Ed
.Pp
will first search string
.Dq foo
in
.Pa $HOME/lib/mydb
and then in
.Pa /var/db/locate.database .
.Bd -literal
$ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo
.Ed
.Pp
will first search 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
.Ar -
is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead.
For example, you can compress your database
and use:
.Bd -literal
$ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern
.Ed
.Pp
This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow
I/O.
Note: you can only use
.Ar one
pattern for stdin.
.It Fl i
Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database.
.It Fl l Ar number
Limit output to
.Ar number
of file names and exit.
.It Fl m
Use
.Xr mmap 2
instead of the
.Xr stdio 3
library.
This is the default behavior
and is faster in most cases.
.It Fl s
Use the
.Xr stdio 3
library instead of
.Xr mmap 2 .
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate -compact
.It Pa /var/db/locate.database
locate database
.It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
Script to update the locate database
.It Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
Script that starts the database rebuild
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact
.It Pa LOCATE_PATH
path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the
.Fl d
option was specified.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr find 1 ,
.Xr whereis 1 ,
.Xr which 1 ,
.Xr fnmatch 3 ,
.Xr locate.updatedb 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 first appeared in
.Bx 4.4 .
Many new features were
added in
.Fx 2.2 .
.Sh BUGS
The
.Nm
program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
list files that have been removed from the system.
This is because
locate only reports files that are present in the database, which is
typically only regenerated once a week by the
.Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
script.
Use
.Xr find 1
to locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
.Pp
The
.Nm
database was built by user
.Dq nobody .
The
.Xr find 1
utility skips directories,
which are not readable for user
.Dq nobody ,
group
.Dq nobody ,
or
world.
E.g.\& if your HOME directory is not world-readable, all your
files are
.Ar not
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 understand databases in host byte order or
network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size.
So you can read on a
.Fx Ns /i386
machine
(little endian)
a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine
(big endian, net).
.Pp
The
.Nm
utility does not recognize multibyte characters.