home | help 
WHEREIS(1)		     General Commands Manual		      WHEREIS(1)

NAME
     whereis -- locate programs

SYNOPSIS
     whereis [-abmqsux] [-BMS dir ... -f] program ...

DESCRIPTION
     The whereis utility checks the standard binary, manual page, and source di-
     rectories	for  the  specified  programs,	printing out the paths of any it
     finds.  The supplied program names are first stripped of leading path  name
     components, any single trailing extension added by gzip(1), compress(1), or
     bzip2(1),	and the leading `s.' or trailing `,v' from a source code control
     system.

     The default path searched is the string returned by the  sysctl(8)  utility
     for  the  "user.cs_path" string, with /usr/libexec, /usr/games and the cur-
     rent user's $PATH appended.  Manual pages are searched by default along the
     $MANPATH.	Program sources are located in a list of known standard  places,
     including all the subdirectories of /usr/src and /usr/ports.

     The following options are available:

     -B      Specify  directories  to  search for binaries.  Requires the -f op-
	     tion.

     -M      Specify directories to search for manual pages.   Requires  the  -f
	     option.

     -S      Specify directories to search for program sources.  Requires the -f
	     option.

     -a      Report  all  matches  instead  of	only the first of each requested
	     type.

     -b      Search for binaries.

     -f      Delimits the list of directories after the -B, -M, or  -S	options,
	     and indicates the beginning of the program list.

     -m      Search for manual pages.

     -q      ("quiet").  Suppress the output of the utility name in front of the
	     normal  output  line.  This can become handy for use in a backquote
	     substitution of a shell command line, see "EXAMPLES".

     -s      Search for source directories.

     -u      Search for "unusual" entries.  A file is said to be unusual  if  it
	     does  not have at least one entry of each requested type.	Only the
	     name of the unusual entry is printed.

     -x      Do not use "expensive" tools when searching for source directories.
	     Normally, after unsuccessfully searching all the first-level subdi-
	     rectories of the source directory list, whereis will ask  locate(1)
	     to  find the entry on its behalf.	Since this can take much longer,
	     it can be turned off with -x.

EXAMPLES
     The following finds all utilities under /usr/bin that do not have	documen-
     tation:

	   whereis -m -u /usr/bin/*

     Change to the source code directory of ls(1):

	   cd `whereis -sq ls`

SEE ALSO
     find(1), locate(1), man(1), which(1), sysctl(8)

HISTORY
     The  whereis  utility  appeared  in 3.0BSD.  This version re-implements the
     historical functionality that was lost in 4.4BSD.

AUTHORS
     This implementation of the whereis command was written by Jorg Wunsch.

BUGS
     This re-implementation of the whereis utility is not bug-for-bug compatible
     with historical versions.	It is believed to be compatible with the version
     that was shipping with FreeBSD 2.2 through FreeBSD 4.5 though.

     The whereis utility can report some unrelated source entries  when  the  -a
     option is specified.

FreeBSD 7.1			 August 22, 2002		      WHEREIS(1)
home | help