WHEREIS
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: March 2013
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NAME
whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command
SYNOPSIS
whereis
[
options]
[
-BMS
directory...
-f]
name...
DESCRIPTION
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.
OPTIONS
- -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.
EXAMPLE
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 *
FILE SEARCH PATHS
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.
AVAILABILITY
The whereis command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
Linux Kernel Archive
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- EXAMPLE
-
- FILE SEARCH PATHS
-
- AVAILABILITY
-