man locate - Man page for locate
June 1, 2007 – 1:45 amlocate
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: Jul 2005
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NAME
locate – find files by name
SYNOPSIS
locate [OPTION]… PATTERN…
DESCRIPTION
locate
reads one or more databases prepared by
updatedb(8)
and writes file names matching at least one of the PATTERNs to standard
output, one per line.
PATTERNs can contains globbing characters.
If any
PATTERN
contains no globbing characters,
locate
behaves as if the pattern were *PATTERN*.
By default,
locate
does not check whether files found in database still exist;
locate
can never report files created after the most recent update of the relevant
database.
EXIT STATUS
locate
exits with status 0 if any match was found or if
locate
was invoked with one of the ––limit 0, ––help,
––statistics
or
––version
options.
If no match was found or a fatal error was encountered,
locate
exits with status 1.
Errors encountered while reading a database are not fatal,
search continues in other specified databases, if any.
OPTIONS
- –b, ––basename
Match only the base name against the specified patterns.
- –c, ––count
Instead of writing file names on standard output,
write the number of matching entries only.
- –d, ––database DBPATH
Replace the default database with DBPATH.
DBPATHis a :–separated list of database file names.
If more than one
––databaseoption is specified, the resulting path is a concatenation of the separate
paths.
An empty database file name is replaced by the default database.
A database file name
–refers to the standard input.
Note that a database can be read from the standard input only once.
- –e, ––existing
Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time
locateis run.
- –L, ––follow
When checking whether files exist (if the
––existingoption is specified),
follow trailing symbolic links.
This causes broken symbolic links to be omitted from the output.
This is the default behavior.
- –h, ––help
Write a summary of the available options to standard output
and exit sucessfully.
- –i, ––ignore–case
Ignore case distinctions when matching patterns.
- –l, ––limit, –n LIMIT
Exit successfully after finding
LIMITentries.
If the
––countoption is specified, the resulting count is also limited to LIMIT.
- –m, ––mmap
Ignored, for compatibility with
BSD
and
GNU
locate.
- –P, ––nofollow, –H
When checking whether files exist (if the
––existingoption is specified),
do not follow trailing symbolic links.
This causes broken symbolic links to be reported like other files.
- –0, ––null
Separate the entries on output using the
ASCII NUL
character instead of
writing each entry on a separate line.
This option is designed for interoprerability with the
––nulloption of
GNU
xargs(1).
- –S, ––statistics
Write statistics about each read database to standard output instead of
searching for files
and exit successfully.
- –q, ––quiet
Write no messages about errors encountered while reading and processing
databases.
- –r, ––regexp IREGEXP
Search for a basic regexp REGEXP.
No PATTERNs are allowed if this option is used,
but this option can be specified multiple times.
- ––regex
Interpret all PATTERNs as extended regexps.
- –s, ––stdio
Ignored, for compatibility with
BSD
and
GNU
locate.
- –V, ––version
Write information about the version and licence of
locateon standard output and exit sucessfully.
- –w, ––wholename
Match only the whole path name against the specified patterns.
This is the default behavior.
FILES
- /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db
The database searched by default.
ENVIRONMENT
- LOCATE_PATH
Path to additional databases,
added after the default database or the databases specified using the
––databaseoption.
NOTES
locate
attempts to be compatible to
slocate
(without the options used for creating databases) and
GNU
locate, in that order.
This is the reason for the impractical default ––follow option
and for the confusing set of ––regex and––regexp options.
The short spelling of the –r option is incompatible to
GNU
locate,
where it corresponds to the ––regex option.
Use the long option names to avoid confusion.
The
LOCATE_PATH
environment variable replaces the default database in
BSD
and
GNU
locate,
but it is added to other databases in this implementation and slocate.
AUTHOR
Miloslav Trmac <mitr@redhat.com>
SEE ALSO
updatedb(8)