whereis(1) — Linux manual page
WHEREIS(1) User Commands WHEREIS(1)
NAME
whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a
command
SYNOPSIS
whereis [options] [-BMS directory... -f] name...
DESCRIPTION
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
-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.
-g
Interpret the next names as a glob(7) patterns. whereis
always compares only filenames (aka basename) and never
complete path. Using directory names in the pattern has no
effect. Don’t forget that the shell interprets the pattern
when specified on the command line without quotes. It’s
necessary to use quotes for the name, for example:
whereis -g 'find*'
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Print version and exit.
FILE SEARCH PATHS
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
WHEREIS_DEBUG=all
enables debug output.
EXAMPLES
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 *
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
AVAILABILITY
The whereis command is part of the util-linux package which can
be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. 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
2024-06-14. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
that was found in the repository was 2024-06-10.) 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