1WHEREIS(1)                       User Commands                      WHEREIS(1)
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NAME

6       whereis  -  locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a com‐
7       mand
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SYNOPSIS

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

13       whereis locates the binary, source and manual files for  the  specified
14       command  names.  The supplied names are first stripped of leading path‐
15       name components and any (single) trailing extension of  the  form  .ext
16       (for  example:  .c)  Prefixes  of s.  resulting from use of source code
17       control are also dealt with.   whereis  then  attempts  to  locate  the
18       desired  program in the standard Linux places, and in the places speci‐
19       fied by $PATH and $MANPATH.
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OPTIONS

22       -b     Search only for binaries.
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24       -m     Search only for manuals.
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26       -s     Search only for sources.
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28       -u     Only show the command names that have unusual entries.  A
29              command  is  said  to be unusual if it does not have just
30              one  entry  of  each  explicitly  requested  type.   Thus
31              'whereis  -m  -u  *'  asks for those files in the current
32              directory which have no documentation file, or more  than
33              one.
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35       -B list
36              Limit  the places where whereis searches for binaries, by
37              a whitespace-separated list of directories.
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39       -M list
40              Limit the places where whereis searches for manuals, by a
41              whitespace-separated list of directories.
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43       -S list
44              Limit the places where whereis searches for sources, by a
45              whitespace-separated list of directories.
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47       -f     Terminates the directory list and signals  the  start  of
48              filenames.  It must be used when any of the -B, -M, or -S
49              options is used.
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51       -l     Output list of effective  lookup  paths  the  whereis  is
52              using.  When non of -B, -M, or -S is specified the option
53              will out hard coded paths that the command  was  able  to
54              find on system.
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EXAMPLE

57       To  find all files in /usr/bin which are not documented in /usr/
58       man/man1 or have no source in /usr/src:
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60              $ cd /usr/bin
61              $ whereis -u -ms -M /usr/man/man1 -S /usr/src -f *
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FILE SEARCH PATHS

64       By default whereis tries to find files  from  hard-coded  paths,
65       which  are  defined  with glob patterns. The command attempst to
66       use contents of $PATH  and  $MANPATH  environment  variables  as
67       default  search path.  The easiest way to know what paths are in
68       use is to add -l listing option.  Effects of the -B, -M, and  -S
69       are display with -l.
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AVAILABILITY

72       The  whereis  command  is  part of the util-linux package and is
73       available from Linux  Kernel  Archive  ⟨ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub
74       /linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.
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78util-linux                        March 2013                        WHEREIS(1)