NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     locate -- find filenames quickly

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

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

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The locate program searches a database for all pathnames which match the
     specified pattern.  The database is recomputed periodically (usually
     weekly 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 only stored characters between 32 and 127.  The current
 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 databases.
  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
		 default behavior and is faster in most cases.

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

FILES    [Toc]    [Back]

     /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    [Toc]    [Back]

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

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

     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    [Toc]    [Back]

     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''.	The find(1) utility
     skips directories, which are not readable for user ``nobody'', group
     ``nobody'', or world.  E.g. if your HOME directory is 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 current
 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    [Toc]    [Back]

     The locate command first appeared in 4.4BSD.  Many new features were
     added in FreeBSD 2.2.


FreeBSD 5.2.1			 June 6, 1993			 FreeBSD 5.2.1