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 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 specified 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 patterns. 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-sepa‐
              rated list of directories.

       -M list
              Limit the places where whereis searches for manuals, by  a  whitespace-sepa‐
              rated list of directories.

       -S list
              Limit  the  places where whereis searches for sources, by a whitespace-sepa‐
              rated 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)