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WHEREIS(1) User Commands WHEREIS(1)
NAME
whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command
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 pathname components. 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
-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.
FILE SEARCH PATHS
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
WHEREIS_DEBUG=all
enables debug output.
EXAMPLES
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 *
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker at https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/issues.
AVAILABILITY
The whereis command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux
Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
util-linux 2.37.2 2021-06-02 WHEREIS(1)
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On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
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