WHEREIS(1) manual page
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whereis - locate the binary, source,
and manual page files for a command
whereis [options] [-BMS directory...
-f] name...
whereis locates the binary, source and manual files
for the specified command names. The supplied names are first stripped of
leading pathname components and any (single) trailing extension of the
form .ext (for example: .c) Prefixes of s. resulting from use of source code
control are also dealt with. whereis then attempts to locate the desired
program in the standard Linux places, and in the places specified by $PATH
and $MANPATH.
The search restrinctions (options -b, -m and -s) are cumulative
and always applied for the next name patterns specified on command line.
The first search restrinction resets the search mask. For example
whereis
-bm ls tr -m gcc
searchs for "ls" and "tr" binaries and man pages, and "gcc"
man pages only.
The options -B, -M and -S resets search paths for the next
name patterns. For example
whereis -m ls -M /usr/share/man/man1 -f cal
searchs
for "ls" man pages in all default paths, but for "cal" in /usr/share/man/man1
directory only.
- -b
- Search for binaries.
- -m
- Search for manuals.
- -s
- Search
for sources.
- -u
- Only show the command names that have unusual entries. A command
is said to be unusual if it does not have just one entry of each explicitly
requested type. Thus ’whereis -m -u *’ asks for those files in the current directory
which have no documentation file, or more than one.
- -B list
- Limit the places
where whereis searches for binaries, by a whitespace-separated list of directories.
- -M list
- Limit the places where whereis searches for manuals, by a whitespace-separated
list of directories.
- -S list
- Limit the places where whereis searches for sources,
by a whitespace-separated list of directories.
- -f
- Terminates the directory
list and signals the start of filenames. It must be used when any of the
-B, -M, or -S options is used.
- -l
- Output list of effective lookup paths the whereis
is using. When non of -B, -M, or -S is specified the option will out hard
coded paths that the command was able to find on system.
To find
all files in /usr/:bin which are not documented in /usr/:man/:man1 or have
no source in /usr/:src:
- $ cd /usr/bin
$ whereis -u -ms -M /usr/man/man1 -S /usr/src -f *
By default
whereis tries to find files from hard-coded paths, which are defined with
glob patterns. The command attempst to use contents of $PATH and $MANPATH
environment variables as default search path. The easiest way to know what
paths are in use is to add -l listing option. Effects of the -B, -M, and -S
are display with -l.
The whereis command is part of the util-linux
package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive
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