Category
Linux Command
Usage
whereis [-bmsu] [-BMS directory... -f] filename...
Manual
whereis
locates source/binary and manuals sections for specified files. The supplied names are first stripped of leading pathname 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 desired program in a list of standard Linux places, and in the places specified by $PATH
and $MANPATH
.
- -b: Search only for binaries.
- -m: Search only for manuals.
- -s: Search only 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, 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 list of effective lookup paths the whereis is using. When non of -B, -M, or -S is specified the option will out hard coded paths that the command was able to find on system.
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