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.

OPTIONS
       -b     Search only for binaries.

       -m     Search only for manuals.

       -s     Search only 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)