1locate(1) General Commands Manual locate(1)
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6 plocate - find files by name, quickly
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10 plocate [OPTION]... PATTERN...
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14 plocate finds all files on the system matching the given pattern (or
15 all of the patterns if multiple are given). It does this by means of an
16 index made by plocate-build(8), which in turn reads the database made
17 by updatedb(8).
18 plocate is largely compatible with mlocate(1), and reuses its database
20 to create its index, but is significantly faster. In particular, it
21 rarely needs to scan through its entire database, unless the pattern is
22 very short (less than three bytes) or you want to search for a regular
23 expression. It does not try to maintain compatibility with BSD locate,
24 or non-UTF-8 filenames and locales. Most I/O is done asynchronously,
25 but the results are synchronized so that output comes in the same order
26 every time.
27 When multiple patterns are given, plocate will search for files that
29 match all of them. This is the main incompatibility with mlocate(1),
30 which searches for files that match one or more patterns, unless the -a
31 option is given.
32 By default, patterns are taken to be substrings to search for. If at
34 least one non-escaped globbing metacharacter (*, ? or []) is given,
35 that pattern is instead taken to be a glob pattern (which means it
36 needs to start and end in * for a substring match). If --regexp is
37 given, patterns are instead taken to be (non-anchored) POSIX basic reg‐
38 ular expressions, and if --regex is given, patterns are taken to be
39 POSIX extended regular expressions. All of this matches mlocate(1) be‐
40 havior.
41 Like mlocate(1), plocate shows all files visible to the calling user
43 (by virtue of having read and execute permissions on all parent direc‐
44 tories), and none that are not, by means of running with the setgid bit
45 set to access the index (which is built as root), but by testing visi‐
46 bility as the calling user.
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50 -b, --basename
51 Match only against the file name portion of the path name, ie.,
52 the directory names will be excluded from the match (but still
53 printed). This does not speed up the search, but can suppress
54 uninteresting matches.
55 -c, --count
58 Do not print each match. Instead, count them, and print out a
59 total number at the end.
60 -d, --database DBPATH
63 Find matches in the given database, instead of /var/lib/plo‐
64 cate/plocate.db. This argument can be given multiple times, to
65 search multiple databases. It is also possible to give multiple
66 databases in one argument, separated by :. (Any character, in‐
67 cluding : and \, can be escaped by prepending a \.)
68 -e, --existing
71 Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time lo‐
72 cate is run. Note that unlike mlocate(1), symlinks are not fol‐
73 lowed by default (and indeed, there is no option to change
74 this).
75 -i, --ignore-case
78 Do a case-insensitive match as given by the current locale (de‐
79 fault is case-sensitive, byte-by-byte match). Note that plocate
80 does not support the full range of Unicode case folding rules;
81 in particular, searching for ß will not give you matches on ss
82 even in a German locale. Also note that this option will be
83 somewhat slower than a case-sensitive match, since it needs to
84 generate more candidates for searching the index.
85 -l, --limit LIMIT
88 Stop searching after LIMIT matches have been found. If --count
89 is given, the number printed out will be at most LIMIT.
90 -N, --literal
93 Print entry names without quoting. Normally, plocate will escape
94 special characters in filenames, so that they are safe for con‐
95 sumption by typical shells (similar to the GNU coreutils shell-
96 escape-always quoting style), unless printing to a pipe, but
97 this options will turn off such quoting.
98 -0, --null
101 Instead of writing a newline after every match, write a NUL
102 (ASCII 0). This is useful for creating unambiguous output when
103 it is to be processed by other tools (like xargs(1)), as file‐
104 names are allowed to contain embedded newlines.
105 -r, --regexp
108 Patterns are taken to be POSIX basic regular expressions. See
109 regex(7) for more information. Note that this forces a linear
110 scan through the entire database, which is slow.
111 --regex
114 Like --regexp, but patterns are instead taken to be POSIX ex‐
115 tended regular expressions.
116 -w, --wholename
119 Match against the entire path name. This is the default, so un‐
120 less -b is given first (see above), it will not do anything.
121 This option thus exists only as compatibility with mlocate(1).
122 --help Print out usage information, then exit successfully.
125 --version
128 Print out version information, then exit successfully.
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132 LOCATE_PATH
133 If given, appended after the list of --database paths (whether
134 an explicit is given or the default is used). Colon-delimiting
135 and character escaping follows the same rules as for --database.
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139 Steinar H. Gunderson <steinar+plocate@gunderson.no>
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143 plocate-build(8), mlocate(1), updatedb(8)
144plocate Oct 2020 locate(1)