WHEREIS(1)                       User Commands                      WHEREIS(1)



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

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 path-
       name 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 speci-
       fied 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 pat-
       terns. 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 <ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub
       /linux/utils/util-linux/>.



util-linux                        March 2013                        WHEREIS(1)
