What is whereis ?
3 whereis examples
Syntax and Options
Related Commands
What is whereis ?
Whereis command is used to find out where the binary, source, and man page files for a command is located.
3 whereis Examples
Find whereis a UNIX command
When you want to find out where a specific Unix command exists (for example, where does ls command exists?), you can execute the following command.
$ whereis ls ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1p/ls.1p.gz
Find whereis a UNIX command executable is located
When you want to know only where the executable for a specific command is available, use -b option. This is more handy, and you are most likely be using whereis command to find out the location of only executables.
$ whereis -b ls ls: /bin/ls
Change the search location of whereis command
When you want to search an executable from a path other than the whereis default path, you can use -B option and give path as argument to it.
$ whereis -u -B /tmp -f lsmk lsmk: /tmp/lsmk
This searches for the executable lsmk in the /tmp directory, and displays it, if it is available.
Syntax and Options
| Short Option | Option Description |
|---|---|
| -b | Search only for binaries |
| -m | Search only for manual sections |
| -s | Search only for sources |
| -u | Search for unusual entries. A file is said to be unusual if it does not have one entry of each requested type. Thus ‘whereis -m -u’ asks for those files in the current directory which have no documentation |
| -B | Change or otherwise limit the places where whereis searches for binaries |
| -M | Change or otherwise limit the places where whereis searches for manual sections |
| -S | Change or otherwise limit the places where whereis searches for sources |
| -f | Terminate the last directory list and signals the start of file names, and must be used when any of the -B, -M, or -S options are used |
Related Commands
locate