whereis(1) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| FILE SEARCH PATHS \| ENVIRONMENT \| EXAMPLES \| REPORTING BUGS \| AVAILABILITY

WHEREIS(1)                    User Commands                    WHEREIS(1)

NAME top

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

SYNOPSIS top

       whereis [options] [-BMS directory... -f] name...

DESCRIPTION top

       whereis locates the binary, source and manual files for the
       specified command names. The supplied names are first stripped of
       leading pathname components. Prefixes of s. resulting from use of
       source code control are also dealt with. whereis then attempts to
       locate the desired program in the standard Linux places, and in
       the places specified by $PATH and $MANPATH.

       The search restrictions (options -b, -m and -s) are cumulative and
       apply to the subsequent name patterns on the command line. Any new
       search restriction resets the search mask. For example,

          whereis -bm ls tr -m gcc

       searches for "ls" and "tr" binaries and man pages, and for "gcc"
       man pages only.

       The options -B, -M and -S reset search paths for the subsequent
       name patterns. For example,

          whereis -m ls -M /usr/share/man/man1 -f cal

       searches for "ls" man pages in all default paths, but for "cal" in
       the /usr/share/man/man1 directory only.

OPTIONS top

       -b
           Search for binaries.

       -m
           Search for manuals.

       -s
           Search for sources.

       -u
           Only show the command names that have unusual entries. A
           command is said to be unusual if it does not have just one
           entry of each explicitly requested type. Thus 'whereis -m -u
           *' asks for those files in the current directory which have no
           documentation file, or more than one.

       -B list
           Limit the places where whereis searches for binaries, by a
           whitespace-separated list of directories.

       -M list
           Limit the places where whereis searches for manuals and
           documentation in Info format, by a whitespace-separated list
           of directories.

       -S list
           Limit the places where whereis searches for sources, by a
           whitespace-separated list of directories.

       -f
           Terminates the directory list and signals the start of
           filenames. It must be used when any of the -B, -M, or -S
           options is used.

       -l
           Output the list of effective lookup paths that whereis is
           using. When none of -B, -M, or -S is specified, the option
           will output the hard-coded paths that the command was able to
           find on the system.

       -g
           Interpret the next names as a glob(7) patterns. whereis always
           compares only filenames (aka basename) and never complete
           path. Using directory names in the pattern has no effect.
           Don’t forget that the shell interprets the pattern when
           specified on the command line without quotes. It’s necessary
           to use quotes for the name, for example:

              whereis -g 'find*'

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Display version and exit.

FILE SEARCH PATHS top

       By default whereis tries to find files from hard-coded paths,
       which are defined with glob patterns. The command attempts to use
       the contents of $PATH and $MANPATH environment variables as
       default search path. The easiest way to know what paths are in use
       is to add the -l listing option. Effects of the -B, -M, and -S are
       displayed with -l.

ENVIRONMENT top

       WHEREIS_DEBUG=all
           enables debug output.

EXAMPLES top

       To find all files in /usr/bin which are not documented in
       /usr/man/man1 or have no source in /usr/src:

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

REPORTING BUGS top

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY top

       The whereis command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
       part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
       project. Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-08-09                     WHEREIS(1)