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.\" @(#)whereis.1 from UCB 4.2
.TH WHEREIS 1 "March 2013" "util-linux" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
whereis \- locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B whereis
.RB [ options ]
.RB [ \-BMS
.IR directory "... " \fB\-f\fR ]
.IR name ...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B 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
.BI . ext
(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
the standard Linux places, and in the places specified by
.BR $PATH .
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.IP "\fB\-b\fP"
Search only for binaries.
.IP "\fB\-m\fP"
Search only for manuals.
.IP "\fB\-s\fP"
Search only for sources.
.IP "\fB\-u\fP"
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
.RB ` "whereis\ \ \-m\ \ \-u\ \ *" '
asks for those files in the current
directory which have no documentation file, or more than one.
.IP "\fB\-B \fIlist\fP"
Limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for binaries, by a whitespace-separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-M \fIlist\fP"
Limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for manuals, by a whitespace-separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-S \fIlist\fP"
Limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for sources, by a whitespace-separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-f\fP"
Terminates the directory list and signals the start of filenames. It
.I must
be used when any of the
.BR \-B ,
.BR \-M ,
or
.BR \-S
options is used.
.IP "\fB\-l"
Output list of effective lookup paths the
.B whereis
is using. When non of
.BR \-B ,
.BR \-M ,
or
.BR \-S
is specified the option will out hard coded paths that the command was
able to find on system.
.SH EXAMPLE
To find all files in
.B /usr/bin
which are not documented
in
.B /usr/man/man1
or have no source in
.BR /usr/src :
.IP
.B $ cd /usr/bin
.br
.B $ whereis \-u \-ms \-M /usr/man/man1 \-S /usr/src \-f *
.SH "FILE SEARCH PATHS"
By default
.B whereis
tries to find files from hard-coded paths, which are defined with glob
patterns. The command attempst to use contents of
.B $PATH
and
.B $MANPATH
environment variables as default search path. The easiest way to know
what paths are in use is to add
.B \-l
listing option. Effects of the
.BR \-B ,
.BR \-M ,
and
.BR \-S
are display with
.BR \-l .
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR chdir (2)
.SH BUGS
Since
.B whereis
uses
.BR chdir (2)
to run faster, pathnames given with the
.BR \-B ,
.BR \-M ,
or
.BR \-S
options must be full; that is, they must begin with a
.RB ` / '.
.PP
.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/.
