Locate
NAME
locate - find files by name
SYNOPSIS
locate [OPTION]... PATTERN...
DESCRIPTION
locate reads one or more databases prepared by updatedb(8) and writes file names matching at least one of the
PATTERNs to standard output, one per line.
If --regex is not specified, PATTERNs can contain globbing characters. If any PATTERN contains no globbing
characters, locate behaves as if the pattern were *PATTERN*.
By default, locate does not check whether files found in database still exist (but it does require all parent
directories to exist if the database was built with --require-visibility no). locate can never report files
created after the most recent update of the relevant database.
EXIT STATUS
locate exits with status 0 if any match was found or if locate was invoked with one of the --limit 0, --help,
--statistics or --version options. If no match was found or a fatal error was encountered, locate exits with
status 1.
Errors encountered while reading a database are not fatal, search continues in other specified databases, if any.
OPTIONS
-A, --all
Print only entries that match all PATTERNs instead of requiring only one of them to match.
-b, --basename
Match only the base name against the specified patterns. This is the opposite of --wholename.
-c, --count
Instead of writing file names on standard output, write the number of matching entries only.
-d, --database DBPATH
Replace the default database with DBPATH. DBPATH is a :-separated list of database file names. If more than one --database option is specified, the resulting path is a concatenation of the separate paths.
An empty database file name is replaced by the default database. A database file name - refers to the standard input. Note that a database can be read from the standard input only once.
-e, --existing
Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time locate is run.
-L, --follow
When checking whether files exist (if the --existing option is specified), follow trailing symbolic links. This causes broken symbolic links to be omitted from the output. This is the default behavior. The opposite can be specified using --nofollow.
-h, --help
Write a summary of the available options to standard output and exit successfully.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case distinctions when matching patterns.
-p, --ignore-spaces
Ignore punctuation and spaces when matching patterns.
-t, --transliterate
Ignore accents using iconv transliteration when matching patterns.
-l, --limit, -n LIMIT
Exit successfully after finding LIMIT entries. If the --count option is specified, the resulting count is also limited to LIMIT.
-m, --mmap
Ignored, for compatibility with BSD and GNU locate.
-P, --nofollow, -H
When checking whether files exist (if the --existing option is specified), do not follow trailing symbolic links. This causes broken symbolic links to be reported like other files.
This is the opposite of --follow.