1 .\" Copyright (c) 1995 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin.
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33 .\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
34 .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/locate/locate/locate.1,v 1.16.2.5 2002/07/08 21:31:28 trhodes Exp $
41 .Nd find filenames quickly
51 program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified
53 The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily),
54 and contains the pathnames
55 of all files which are publicly accessible.
57 Shell globbing and quoting characters
66 although they will have to be escaped from the shell.
67 Preceding any character with a backslash
69 eliminates any special
70 meaning which it may have.
71 The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly,
75 As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters
77 is matched as though it were
80 Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127. The
81 current implementation store any character except newline
85 The 8-bit character support doesn't waste extra space for
86 plain ASCII file names.
87 Characters less than 32 or greater than 127
88 are stored in 2 bytes.
90 The following options are available:
93 Print some statistic about the database and exit.
95 Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names.
99 instead the default file name database.
102 options are allowed. Each additional
104 option adds the specified database to the list
105 of databases to be searched.
109 may be a colon-separated list of databases.
110 A single colon is a reference
111 to the default database.
113 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo
116 will first search string
121 .Pa /var/db/locate.database .
123 $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo
126 will first search string
131 .Pa /var/db/locate.database
133 .Pa /cdrom/locate.database .
135 $ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern
140 $ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern
145 .Dq $ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern .
150 is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead.
151 For example, you can compress your database
154 $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern
157 This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow
158 I/O. Note: you can only use
162 Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database.
166 of file names and exit.
173 This is the default behavior
174 and is faster in most cases.
182 .Bl -tag -width /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate -compact
183 .It Pa /var/db/locate.database
185 .It Pa /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
186 Script to update the locate database
187 .It Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
188 Script that starts the database rebuild
191 .Bl -tag -width LOCATE_PATH -compact
193 path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the
195 option was specified.
202 .Xr locate.updatedb 8
206 .%T "Finding Files Fast"
214 program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
215 list files that have been removed from the system. This is because
216 locate only reports files that are present in the database, which is
217 typically only regenerated once a week by the
218 .Pa /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
221 to locate files that are of a more transitory nature.
225 database was built by user
229 which are not readable for user
235 E.g. if your HOME directory is not world-readable, all your
242 database is not byte order independent.
244 to share the databases between machines with different byte order.
247 implementation understand databases in host byte order or
248 network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size.
253 a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine
258 command first appeared in
260 Many new features were