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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | BUGS | COLOPHON |
LOCATE(1) General Commands Manual LOCATE(1)
locate - list files in databases that match a pattern
locate [-d path | --database=path] [-e | -E | --[non-]existing] [-i |
--ignore-case] [-0 | --null] [-c | --count] [-w | --wholename] [-b |
--basename] [-l N | --limit=N] [-S | --statistics] [-r | --regex ]
[--max-database-age D] [-P | -H | --nofollow] [-L | --follow]
[--version] [-A | --all] [-p | --print] [--help] pattern...
This manual page documents the GNU version of locate. For each given
pattern, locate searches one or more databases of file names and
displays the file names that contain the pattern. Patterns can
contain shell-style metacharacters: `*', `?', and `[]'. The
metacharacters do not treat `/' or `.' specially. Therefore, a
pattern `foo*bar' can match a file name that contains `foo3/bar', and
a pattern `*duck*' can match a file name that contains `lake/.ducky'.
Patterns that contain metacharacters should be quoted to protect them
from expansion by the shell.
If a pattern is a plain string — it contains no metacharacters —
locate displays all file names in the database that contain that
string anywhere. If a pattern does contain metacharacters, locate
only displays file names that match the pattern exactly. As a
result, patterns that contain metacharacters should usually begin
with a `*', and will most often end with one as well. The exceptions
are patterns that are intended to explicitly match the beginning or
end of a file name.
The file name databases contain lists of files that were on the
system when the databases were last updated. The system
administrator can choose the file name of the default database, the
frequency with which the databases are updated, and the directories
for which they contain entries; see updatedb(1).
If locate's output is going to a terminal, unusual characters in the
output are escaped in the same way as for the -print action of the
find command. If the output is not going to a terminal, file names
are printed exactly as-is.
-0, --null
Use ASCII NUL as a separator, instead of newline.
-A, --all
Print only names which match all non-option arguments, not
those matching one or more non-option arguments.
-b, --basename
Results are considered to match if the pattern specified
matches the final component of the name of a file as listed in
the database. This final component is usually referred to as
the `base name'.
-c, --count
Instead of printing the matched filenames, just print the
total number of matches we found, unless --print (-p) is also
present.
-d path, --database=path
Instead of searching the default file name database, search
the file name databases in path, which is a colon-separated
list of database file names. You can also use the environment
variable LOCATE_PATH to set the list of database files to
search. The option overrides the environment variable if both
are used. Empty elements in the path are taken to be synonyms
for the file name of the default database. A database can be
supplied on stdin, using `-' as an element of path. If more
than one element of path is `-', later instances are ignored
(and a warning message is printed).
The file name database format changed starting with GNU find
and locate version 4.0 to allow machines with different byte
orderings to share the databases. This version of locate can
automatically recognize and read databases produced for older
versions of GNU locate or Unix versions of locate or find.
Support for the old locate database format will be
discontinued in a future release.
-e, --existing
Only print out such names that currently exist (instead of
such names that existed when the database was created). Note
that this may slow down the program a lot, if there are many
matches in the database. If you are using this option within
a program, please note that it is possible for the file to be
deleted after locate has checked that it exists, but before
you use it.
-E, --non-existing
Only print out such names that currently do not exist (instead
of such names that existed when the database was created).
Note that this may slow down the program a lot, if there are
many matches in the database.
--help Print a summary of the options to locate and exit.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the file
names.
-l N, --limit=N
Limit the number of matches to N. If a limit is set via this
option, the number of results printed for the -c option will
never be larger than this number.
-L, --follow
If testing for the existence of files (with the -e or -E
options), consider broken symbolic links to be non-existing.
This is the default.
--max-database-age D
Normally, locate will issue a warning message when it searches
a database which is more than 8 days old. This option changes
that value to something other than 8. The effect of
specifying a negative value is undefined.
-m, --mmap
Accepted but does nothing, for compatibility with BSD locate.
-P, -H, --nofollow
If testing for the existence of files (with the -e or -E
options), treat broken symbolic links as if they were existing
files. The -H form of this option is provided purely for
similarity with find; the use of -P is recommended over -H.
-p, --print
Print search results when they normally would not, because of
the presence of --statistics (-S) or --count (-c).
-r, --regex
The pattern specified on the command line is understood to be
a regular expression, as opposed to a glob pattern. The
Regular expressions work in the same was as in emacs and find,
except for the fact that "." will match a newline. Filenames
whose full paths match the specified regular expression are
printed (or, in the case of the -c option, counted). If you
wish to anchor your regular expression at the ends of the full
path name, then as is usual with regular expressions, you
should use the characters ^ and $ to signify this.
-s, --stdio
Accepted but does nothing, for compatibility with BSD locate.
-S, --statistics
Print various statistics about each locate database and then
exit without performing a search, unless non-option arguments
are given. For compatibility with BSD, -S is accepted as a
synonym for --statistics. However, the output of locate -S is
different for the GNU and BSD implementations of locate.
--version
Print the version number of locate and exit.
-w, --wholename
Match against the whole name of the file as listed in the
database. This is the default.
LOCATE_PATH
Colon-separated list of databases to search. If the value has
a leading or trailing colon, or has two colons in a row, you
may get results that vary between different versions of
locate.
find(1), locatedb(5), updatedb(1), xargs(1), glob(3)
The full documentation for locate is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
If the info and locate programs are properly installed at your site,
the command info locate should give you access to the complete
manual.
The locate program started life as the BSD fast find program,
contributed to BSD by James A. Woods. This was described by his
paper Finding Files Fast which was published in Usenix ;login:, Vol
8, No 1, February/March, 1983, pp. 8-10. When the find program
began to assume a default -print action if no action was specified,
this changed the interpretation of find pattern. The BSD developers
therefore moved the fast find functionality into locate. The GNU
implementation of locate appears to be derived from the same code.
Significant changes to locate in reverse order:
4.3.7 Byte-order independent support for old database format
4.3.3 locate -i supports multi-byte characters correctly
Introduced --max_db_age
4.3.2 Support for the slocate database format
4.2.22 Introduced the --all option
4.2.15 Introduced the --regex option
4.2.14 Introduced options -L, -P, -H
4.2.12 Empty items in LOCATE_PATH now indicate the default database
4.2.11 Introduced the --statistics option
4.2.4 Introduced --count and --limit
4.2.0 Glob characters cause matching against the whole file name
4.0 Introduced the LOCATE02 database format
3.7 Locate can search multiple databases
The locate database correctly handles filenames containing newlines,
but only if the system's sort command has a working -z option. If
you suspect that locate may need to return filenames containing
newlines, consider using its --null option.
The best way to report a bug is to use the form at
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils. The reason for this
is that you will then be able to track progress in fixing the
problem. Other comments about locate(1) and about the findutils
package in general can be sent to the bug-findutils mailing list. To
join the list, send email to bug-findutils-request@gnu.org.
This page is part of the findutils (find utilities) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.savannah.gnu.org/findutils.git⟩ on 2017-07-05. If you dis‐
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you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
to man-pages@man7.org
LOCATE(1)
Pages that refer to this page: find(1), intro(1), locate(1), updatedb(1), xargs(1)