1.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" %sccs.include.redist.roff% 5.\" 6.\" @(#)locate.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 06/06/93 7.\" 8.Dd 9.Dt LOCATE 1 10.Os BSD 4.4 11.Sh NAME 12.Nm locate 13.Nd find files 14.Sh SYNOPSIS 15.Ar locate 16pattern 17.Sh DESCRIPTION 18.Nm Locate 19searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified 20.Ar pattern . 21The database is recomputed periodically, and contains the pathnames 22of all files which are publicly accessible. 23.Pp 24Shell globbing and quoting characters (``*'', ``?'', ``\e'', ``['' 25and ``]'') 26may be used in 27.Ar pattern , 28although they will have to be escaped from the shell. 29Preceding any character with a backslash (``\e'') eliminates any special 30meaning which it may have. 31The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly, 32including slashes (``/''). 33.Pp 34As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters (``foo'') 35is matched as though it were ``*foo*''. 36.Sh FILES 37.Bl -tag -width /var/db/locate.database -compact 38.It Pa /var/db/locate.database 39.El 40.Sh SEE ALSO 41.Xr find 1 , 42.Xr fnmatch 3 43.Rs 44.%A Woods, James A. 45.%D 1983 46.%T "Finding Files Fast" 47.%J ";login" 48.%V 8:1 49.%P pp. 8-10 50.Re 51.Sh HISTORY 52The 53.Nm locate 54command appears in 55.Bx 4.4 . 56