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.\" @(#)whereis.1 from UCB 4.2
.TH WHEREIS 1 "July 2009" "util-linux" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
whereis \- locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B whereis
.RB [ \-bmsu ]
.RB [ \-BMS
.IR directory ...
.BR \-f ]
.IR filename ...
.IX  "whereis command"  ""  "\fLwhereis\fP \(em find program"
.IX  find "program \(em \fLwhereis\fP"
.IX  "locate program"  ""   "locate program \(em \fLwhereis\fP"
.IX  command  locate  ""   "locate \(em \fLwhereis\fP"
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B whereis
locates source/binary and manuals sections for specified
files.
The supplied names are first stripped of leading pathname components
and any (single) trailing extension of the form
.BI . ext\fR,\fP
for example,
.BR .c .
Prefixes of
.B s.
resulting from use of source code control are also dealt with.
.B whereis
then attempts to locate the desired program in
a list of standard Linux places.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-b
Search only for binaries.
.TP
.B \-m
Search only for manual sections.
.TP
.B \-s
Search only for sources.
.TP
.B \-u
Search for unusual entries.  A file is said to be unusual if it does
not have one entry of each requested type.
Thus
.RB ` "whereis\ \ \-m\ \ \-u\ \ *" '
asks for those files in the current
directory which have no documentation.
.TP
.B \-B
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for binaries.
.TP
.B \-M
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for
manual sections.
.TP
.B \-S
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for sources.
.TP
.B \-f
Terminate the last directory list and signals the start of file names,
and
.I must
be used when any of the
.BR \-B ,
.BR \-M ,
or
.B \-S
options are used.
.SH EXAMPLE
Find all files in
.B /usr/bin
which are not documented
in
.B /usr/man/man1
with source in
.BR /usr/src :
.IP
.nf
.ft B
example% cd /usr/bin
example% whereis \-u \-M /usr/man/man1 \-S /usr/src \-f *
.fi
.ft R
.SH FILES
.TP 20
.B /{bin,sbin,etc}
.TP
.B /usr/{lib,bin,old,new,local,games,include,etc,src,man,sbin,
.B X386,TeX,g++-include}
.TP
.B /usr/local/{X386,TeX,X11,include,lib,man,etc,bin,games,emacs}
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR chdir (2V)
.SH BUGS
Since
.B whereis
uses
.BR chdir (2V)
to run faster, pathnames given with the
.BR \-M ,
.BR \-S ,
or
.B \-B
must be full; that is, they must begin with a
.RB ` / '.
.PP
.B whereis
has a hard-coded path, so may not always find what
you're looking for.
.SH AVAILABILITY
The whereis command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.