whereis(1) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| FILE SEARCH PATHS \| ENVIRONMENT \| EXAMPLES \| AVAILABILITY \| COLOPHON

WHEREIS(1)                    User Commands                   WHEREIS(1)

NAME top

       whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a
       command

SYNOPSIS top

       whereis [options] [-BMS directory... -f] name...

DESCRIPTION top

       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 top

       -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 top

       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 top

       WHEREIS_DEBUG=all
              enables debug output.

EXAMPLES top

       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 *

AVAILABILITY top

       The whereis command is part of the util-linux package and is
       available from Linux Kernel Archive 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project.  Information about the project can be found
       at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2020-12-18.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2020-12-17.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux                    October 2014                    WHEREIS(1)