locate - find filenames quickly
locate [-cimSs] [-d database] [-l limit] pattern [...]
The locate utility 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 stores only characters between 32 and
127. The current
implementation stores all characters except newline
(`0) and NUL
(` '). The 8-bit character support does not waste extra
space for plain
ASCII file names. Characters less than 32 or greater than
127 are stored
as 2 bytes.
The options are as follows:
-c Suppress normal output; instead print a count of
matching file
names.
-d database
Search in database instead of 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.
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 for the 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 for the 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,
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. Usually faster in most cases.
-S Print some statistics about the database and exit.
-s Use the stdio(3) library instead of mmap(2).
LOCATE_PATH Path to the locate database if set and not empty; ignored if
the -d option was specified.
/etc/weekly script that starts the
database rebuild
/usr/libexec/locate.updatedb script to update the locate
database
/var/db/locate.database locate database
find(1), fnmatch(3), locate.updatedb(8), weekly(8)
Woods, James A., "Finding Files Fast", ;login, 8:1, pp.
8-10, 1983.
The locate command appeared in 4.4BSD.
locate 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 a periodically reconstructed
database
(typically rebuilt once a week by the weekly(8) script).
Use find(1) to
locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
The locate database is built by user ``nobody'' using
find(1). This will
skip directories which are not readable by user ``nobody'',
group
``nobody'', or the world. E.g., if your home directory is
not worldreadable,
your files will not appear 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 understands databases in host
byte order or
network byte order. So a little-endian machine can't understand a locate
database which was built on a big-endian machine.
OpenBSD 3.6 June 6, 1993
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