LOCATE(1) BSD Reference Manual LOCATE(1)
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 week-
ly 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 ('\n') and
NUL ('\0'). 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 re-
ports 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 world-readable, 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.
MirBSD #10-current June 6, 1993 1