debian man page for whereis

WHEREIS(1)							   User Commands							WHEREIS(1)

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

SYNOPSIS
       whereis [-bmsu] [-BMS directory...  -f] filename...

DESCRIPTION
       whereis	locates  source/binary and manuals sections for specified files.  The supplied names are first stripped of leading pathname compo-
       nents 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 a list of standard Linux places.

OPTIONS
       -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.

EXAMPLE
       Find all files in /usr/bin which are not documented in /usr/man/man1 with source in /usr/src:

	      example% cd /usr/bin
	      example% whereis -u -M /usr/man/man1 -S /usr/src -f *

FILES
       /{bin,sbin,etc}

       /usr/{lib,bin,old,new,local,games,include,etc,src,man,sbin,
			   X386,TeX,g++-include}

       /usr/local/{X386,TeX,X11,include,lib,man,etc,bin,games,emacs}

SEE ALSO
       chdir(2V)

BUGS
       Since whereis uses chdir(2V) to run faster, pathnames given with the -M, -S, or -B must be full; that is, they must begin with a `/'.

       whereis has a hard-coded path, so may not always find what you're looking for.

AVAILABILITY
       The whereis command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

util-linux							     July 2009								WHEREIS(1)