.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin. .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1,v 1.34 2006/09/29 15:20:45 ru Exp $ .\" .Dd August 17, 2006 .Dt LOCATE 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm locate .Nd find filenames quickly .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl 0Scims .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 .Dv NUL .Pq Sq \e0 . 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 in 2 bytes. .Pp The following options are available: .Bl -tag -width 10n .It Fl 0 Print pathnames separated by an .Tn ASCII .Dv NUL character (character code 0) instead of default NL (newline, character code 10). .It Fl S Print some statistics 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 of 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 .Fl 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 .Em 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 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 FILES .Bl -tag -width /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist -compact .It Pa /var/db/locate.database locate database .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb Script to update the locate database .It Pa /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist Job that starts the database rebuild .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 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist job. Use .Xr find 1 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature. .Pp The .Nm database is typically built by user .Dq nobody and the .Xr locate.updatedb 8 utility skips directories which are not readable for user .Dq nobody , group .Dq nobody , or world. For example, if your HOME directory is not world-readable, .Em none of your files are 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 understands databases in host byte order or network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size. So on a .Fx Ns /i386 machine (little endian), you can read a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine (big endian, net). .Pp The .Nm utility does not recognize multibyte characters.