1 .TH locate 1 "Oct 2020" plocate
3 plocate \- find files by name, quickly
12 finds all files on the system matching the given pattern (or all
13 of the patterns if multiple are given). It does this by means of
16 or (less commonly) converted from another index by
17 .BR plocate-build (8).
19 plocate is largely argument-compatible with
22 faster. In particular, it rarely needs to scan through its entire
23 database, unless the pattern is very short (less than three bytes)
24 or you want to search for a regular expression. It does not try to
25 maintain compatibility with BSD locate, or non-UTF-8 filenames
26 and locales. Most I/O is done asynchronously, but the results are
27 synchronized so that output comes in the same order every time.
29 When multiple patterns are given,
31 will search for files that match
33 of them. This is the main incompatibility with
35 which searches for files that match one or more patterns, unless
36 the \-A option is given.
38 By default, patterns are taken to be substrings to search for.
39 If at least one non-escaped globbing metacharacter (*, ? or []) is given,
40 that pattern is instead taken to be a glob pattern (which means it needs
41 to start and end in * for a substring match). If
43 is given, patterns are instead taken to be (non-anchored) POSIX basic
44 regular expressions, and if
46 is given, patterns are taken to be POSIX extended regular expressions.
54 shows all files visible to the calling user (by virtue of
55 having read and execute permissions on all parent directories),
56 and none that are not, by means of running with the setgid
57 bit set to access the index (which is built as root), but by
58 testing visibility as the calling user.
62 exits with 0 to indicate that a match was found or that
66 were passed. Otherwise,
68 exits with status code 1, indicating that an error occurred or that no matches were found.
72 \fB\-A\fR, \fB\-\-all\fR
73 Ignored for compatibility with
77 \fB\-b\fR, \fB\-\-basename\fR
78 Match only against the file name portion of the path name,
79 ie., the directory names will be excluded from the match
80 (but still printed). This does not speed up the search,
81 but can suppress uninteresting matches.
84 \fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-count\fR
85 Do not print each match. Instead, count them, and print out a total
89 \fB\-d\fR, \fB\-\-database\fR \fIDBPATH\fR
90 Find matches in the given database, instead of \fB/var/lib/plocate/plocate.db\fR.
91 This argument can be given multiple times, to search multiple databases.
92 It is also possible to give multiple databases in one argument, separated by
94 (Any character, including : and \\, can be escaped by prepending a \\.)
97 \fB\-e\fR, \fB\-\-existing\fR
98 Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time
100 is run. Note that unlike
102 symlinks are not followed by default (and indeed, there is no option
106 \fB\-i\fR, \fB\-\-ignore\-case\fR
107 Do a case-insensitive match as given by the current locale
108 (default is case-sensitive, byte-by-byte match). Note that
110 does not support the full range of Unicode case folding rules;
111 in particular, searching for \fIß\fR will not give you matches on \fIss\fR
112 even in a German locale. Also note that this option will be
113 somewhat slower than a case-sensitive match, since it needs to
114 generate more candidates for searching the index.
117 \fB\-l\fR, \fB\-\-limit\fR \fILIMIT\fR
120 matches have been found. If
122 is given, the number printed out will be at most \fILIMIT\fR.
125 \fB\-N\fR, \fB\-\-literal\fR
126 Print entry names without quoting. Normally,
128 will escape special characters in filenames, so that they are safe for
129 consumption by typical shells (similar to the GNU coreutils
130 .I shell-escape-always
131 quoting style), unless printing to a pipe, but this options will
132 turn off such quoting.
135 \fB\-0\fR, \fB\-\-null\fR
136 Instead of writing a newline after every match, write a NUL
137 (ASCII 0). This is useful for creating unambiguous output
138 when it is to be processed by other tools (like \fBxargs\fP(1)), as filenames are
139 allowed to contain embedded newlines.
142 \fB\-r\fR, \fB\-\-regexp\fR
143 Patterns are taken to be POSIX basic regular expressions.
146 for more information. Note that this forces a linear scan
147 through the entire database, which is slow.
151 Like \fB\-\-regexp\fR, but patterns are instead taken to
157 \fB\-w\fR, \fB\-\-wholename\fR
158 Match against the entire path name. This is the default,
159 so unless \fB-b\fR is given first (see above), it will not do
160 anything. This option thus exists only as compatibility with
165 Print out usage information, then exit successfully.
169 Print out version information, then exit successfully.
175 If given, appended after the list of \fB\-\-database\fR paths
176 (whether an explicit is given or the default is used).
177 Colon-delimiting and character escaping follows the same rules
178 as for \fB\-\-database\fR.
181 Steinar H. Gunderson <steinar+plocate@gunderson.no>
184 \fBplocate-build\fP(8),