1 .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin.
2 .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993
3 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
5 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
8 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
9 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
13 .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
14 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
15 .\" without specific prior written permission.
17 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
18 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
19 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
20 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
21 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
22 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
23 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
24 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
25 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
26 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
29 .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
37 .Nd find filenames quickly
47 program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified
49 The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily),
50 and contains the pathnames
51 of all files which are publicly accessible.
53 Shell globbing and quoting characters
62 although they will have to be escaped from the shell.
63 Preceding any character with a backslash
65 eliminates any special
66 meaning which it may have.
67 The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly,
71 As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters
73 is matched as though it were
76 Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127.
78 current implementation store any character except newline
83 The 8-bit character support does not waste extra space for
84 plain ASCII file names.
85 Characters less than 32 or greater than 127
86 are stored in 2 bytes.
88 The following options are available:
91 Print pathnames separated by an
94 character (character code 0) instead of default NL
95 (newline, character code 10).
97 Print some statistics about the database and exit.
99 Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names.
103 instead of the default file name database.
109 option adds the specified database to the list
110 of databases to be searched.
114 may be a colon-separated list of databases.
115 A single colon is a reference
116 to the default database.
118 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo
121 will first search string
126 .Pa /var/db/locate.database .
128 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo
131 will first search string
136 .Pa /var/db/locate.database
138 .Pa /cdrom/locate.database .
140 .Dl "$ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern"
144 .Dl "$ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern"
148 .Dl "$ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern"
152 is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead.
153 For example, you can compress your database
156 $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern
159 This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow
161 Note: you can only use
165 Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database.
169 of file names and exit.
176 This is the default behavior
177 and is faster in most cases.
185 .Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact
187 path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the
189 option was specified.
192 .Bl -tag -width /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate -compact
193 .It Pa /var/db/locate.database
195 .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
196 Script to update the locate database
197 .It Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
198 Script that starts the database rebuild
205 .Xr locate.updatedb 8
209 .%T "Finding Files Fast"
217 command first appeared in
219 Many new features were
225 program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
226 list files that have been removed from the system.
228 locate only reports files that are present in the database, which is
229 typically only regenerated once a week by the
230 .Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
234 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
238 database is typically built by user
241 .Xr locate.updatedb 8
242 utility skips directories
243 which are not readable for user
249 For example, if your HOME directory is not world-readable,
256 database is not byte order independent.
258 to share the databases between machines with different byte order.
261 implementation understands databases in host byte order or
262 network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size.
266 (little endian), you can read
267 a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine
272 utility does not recognize multibyte characters.