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LOCATE(1) General Commands Manual LOCATE(1)

locate — find files

locate pattern

Locate searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically, and contains the pathnames of all files which are publicly accessible.

Shell globbing and quoting characters (``*'', ``?'', ``\'', ``['' and ``]'') may be used in pattern, although they will have to be escaped from the shell. Preceding any character with a backslash (``\'') eliminates any special meaning which it may have. The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly, including slashes (``/'').

As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters (``foo'') is matched as though it were ``*foo*''.

/var/db/locate.database
 

find(1), fnmatch(3)

Woods, James A., “Finding Files Fast”, ;login, 8:1, pp. 8-10, 1983.

The locate command appears in 4.4BSD.

BSD 4.4 June 6, 1993 LOCATE(1)