LOCATE(1)                    UNIX Reference Manual                   LOCATE(1)

NAME
     locate - find filenames quickly

SYNOPSIS
     locate [-Scims] [-l limit] [-d database] pattern ...

DESCRIPTION
     The locate program searches a database for all pathnames which match the
     specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically (usually week-
     ly or daily), and contains the pathnames of all files which are publicly
     accessible.

     Shell globbing and quoting characters (``*'', ``?'', ``\'', ``['' and
     ``]'') may be used in pattern, although they will have to be escaped from
     the shell.  Preceding any character with a backslash (``\'') eliminates
     any special meaning which it may have.  The matching differs in that no
     characters must be matched explicitly, including slashes (``/'').

     As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters (``foo'')
     is matched as though it were ``*foo*''.

     Historically, locate store only characters between 32 and 127.  The cur-
     rent implementation store any character except newline (`\n') and NUL
     (`\0'). 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.

     The following options are available:

     -S          Print some statistic about the database and exit.

     -c          Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching
                 file names.

     -d database
                 Search in database instead the default file name database.
                 Multiple -d options are allowed.  Each additional -d option
                 adds the specified database to the list of databases to be
                 searched.

                 The option database may be a colon-separated list of databas-
                 es. A single colon is a reference to the default database.

                 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo

                 will first search string ``foo'' in $HOME/lib/mydb and then
                 in /var/db/locate.database.

                 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo

                 will first search string ``foo'' in $HOME/lib/mydb and then
                 in /var/db/locate.database and then in
                 /cdrom/locate.database.

                 ``$ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern'' is the same as

                 ``$ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern'' or

                 ``$ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern''.

                 If - is given as the database name, standard input will be
                 read instead.  For example, you can compress your database
                 and use:

                 $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern

                 This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little
                 RAM and slow I/O. Note: you can only use one pattern for
                 stdin.

     -i          Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the
                 database.

     -l number   Limit output to number of file names and exit.

     -m          Use mmap(2) instead of the stdio(3) library. This is the de-
                 fault behavior. Usually faster in most cases.

     -s          Use the stdio(3) library instead of mmap(2).

FILES
     /var/db/locate.database          locate database
     /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb     Script to update the locate database
     /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate  Script that starts the database rebuild

ENVIRONMENT
     LOCATE_PATH  path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if
                  the -d option was specified.

SEE ALSO
     find(1),  whereis(1),  which(1),  fnmatch(3),  locate.updatedb(8)

     Woods, James A., "Finding Files Fast", ;login, 8:1, pp. 8-10, 1983.

BUGS
     The locate 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
     /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate script.  Use find(1) to locate files that
     are of a more transitory nature.

     The locate database was built by user ``nobody''. find(1) skip directo-
     ries, which are not readable for user ``nobody'', group ``nobody'', or
     world. E.g. if your HOME directory ist not world-readable, all your files
     are not in the database.

     The locate database is not byte order independent. It is not possible to
     share the databases between machines with different byte order.  The cur-
     rent locate 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 FreeBSD/i386 machine (little endian) a locate database
     which was built on SunOS/sparc machine (big endian, net).

HISTORY
     The locate command first appeared in 4.4BSD. Many new features were added
     in

BSD Experimental                 June 6, 1993                                1