whereis - locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command

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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 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
       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 exam‐
       ple,

	      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 docu‐
	      mentation 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 for‐
	      mat, 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 com‐
	      mand was able to find on the system.

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 ⟨ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.

util-linux				   October 2014 			       WHEREIS(1)