NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLE | FILE SEARCH PATHS | ENVIRONMENT | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON

WHEREIS(1)                      User Commands                     WHEREIS(1)

NAME         top

       whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a com‐
       mand

SYNOPSIS         top

       whereis [options] [-BMS directory... -f] name...

DESCRIPTION         top

       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 restrictions (options -b, -m and -s) are cumulative and
       apply to the subsequent name patterns on the command line.  Any new
       search restriction resets the search mask.  For example,
              whereis -bm ls tr -m gcc
       searches for "ls" and "tr" binaries and man pages, and for "gcc" man
       pages only.
       The options -B, -M and -S reset search paths for the subsequent name
       patterns.  For example,
              whereis -m ls -M /usr/share/man/man1 -f cal
       searches for "ls" man pages in all default paths, but for "cal" in
       the /usr/share/man/man1 directory only.

OPTIONS         top

       -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 and
              documentation in Info format, 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 the list of effective lookup paths that whereis is
              using.  When none of -B, -M, or -S is specified, the option
              will output the hard-coded paths that the command was able to
              find on the system.
       -h, --help
              Display help text and exit.
       -V, --version
              Display version information and exit.

EXAMPLE         top

       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         top

       By default whereis tries to find files from hard-coded paths, which
       are defined with glob patterns.  The command attempts to use the
       contents of $PATH and $MANPATH environment variables as default
       search path.  The easiest way to know what paths are in use is to add
       the -l listing option.  Effects of the -B, -M, and -S are displayed
       with -l.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       WHEREIS_DEBUG=all
              enables debug output.

AVAILABILITY         top

       The whereis command is part of the util-linux package and is
       available from Linux Kernel Archive 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
       source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
util-linux                      October 2014                      WHEREIS(1)