whereis

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.

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Display version information 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/karelzak/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/>.

util-linux 2.37.2                 2021-06-02                        WHEREIS(1)