WHEREIS(1)

NAME
whereis - locate binary, manual, and or source for program

SYNOPSIS
whereis [-bms] [-u] [-BMS dir ... -f] name ...

DESCRIPTION
Whereis locates source/binary and manuals sections for specified files. The supplied names are first stripped of leading pathname components and of any (single) trailing extension of the form ‘.ext’, e.g. ‘.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 places.

Available options:

-B  Change or limit directories searched for binaries. Requires the -f flag.

-M  Change or limit directories searched for manual entries. Requires the -f flag.

-S  Change or limit directories searched for source. Requires the -f flag.

-b  Search for binaries.

-f  Signals the end of a directory list specified by one or more of the -B, -M or -S options and the start of file names.

-m  Search for manual entries.

-s  Search for source.

-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.

EXAMPLE
The following finds all the files in /usr/bin which are not documented in /usr/share/man/man1 with source in /usr/src/cmd:
    cd /usr/ucb
    whereis -u -M /usr/share/man/man1 -S /usr/src/cmd -f *

FILES
/usr/src/*
/usr/{doc,man}/*
/lib, /etc, /usr/{lib,bin,ucb,old,new,local}

BUGS
Since the program uses chdir(2) to run faster, pathnames given with the -M -S and -B must be full; i.e. they must begin with a ‘/’.

HISTORY
The whereis command appeared in 3.0BSD.