WHEREIS(1) User Commands WHEREIS(1)
NAME
whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a com-
mand
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 path-
name components and any (single) trailing extension of the form .ext
(for example: .c) Prefixes of s. resulting from use of source code
control are also dealt with. whereis then attempts to locate the de-
sired 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 ap-
ply 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 com-
mand 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 documen-
tation in Info format, by a whitespace-separated list of direc-
tories.
-S list
Limit the places where whereis searches for sources, by a white-
space-separated list of directories.
-f Terminates the directory list and signals the start of file-
names. 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.
EXAMPLE
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 *
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.
AVAILABILITY
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/>.
util-linux October 2014 WHEREIS(1)