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.\" @(#)whereis.1 from UCB 4.2
.TH WHEREIS 1 "June 2012" "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 ...
.BR \-f ]
.IR filename ...
.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
.IP "\fB\-b\fP"
Search only for binaries.
.IP "\fB\-m\fP"
Search only for manual sections.
.IP "\fB\-s\fP"
Search only for sources.
.IP "\fB\-u\fP"
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.
.IP "\fB\-B \fIlist\fP"
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for binaries by white-space separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-M \fIlist\fP"
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for manual sections by white-space separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-S \fIlist\fP"
.B \-S
Change or otherwise limit the places where
.B whereis
searches for sources white-space separated list of directories.
.IP "\fB\-f\fP"
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
.BB \-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
$ cd /usr/bin
$ whereis \-u \-M /usr/man/man1 \-S /usr/src \-f *
.fi
.ft R
.SH FILES
.B whereis
has basic set of hard-coded paths (see below). If the option
.B \-B
is not specified then also follows
.B $PATH
environment variable (since version 2.21).

.TP 20
/{bin,sbin,etc}
.TP
/usr/{lib,bin,old,new,local,games,include,etc,src,man,sbin,X386,TeX,g++-include}
.TP
/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
.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/.