LOCATE(1) BSD General Commands Manual LOCATE(1) NAME locate -- find files SYNOPSIS locate pattern DESCRIPTION locate searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically, and contains the path- names 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*''. FILES /var/db/locate.database Database /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb Script to update database. SEE ALSO find(1), fnmatch(3), weekly.conf(5) Woods, James A., "Finding Files Fast", ;login, 8:1, pp. 8-10, 1983. HISTORY The locate command appears in 4.4BSD. 4.4BSD June 6, 1993 4.4BSD