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The locate command

The locate command searches the file system for files and directories whose name matches a given pattern through a database file that is generated by the updatedb command.

Examples:

  1. Running the locate command to search for a file named .bashrc.
locate .bashrc

Output

/etc/bash.bashrc
/etc/skel/.bashrc
/home/linuxize/.bashrc
/usr/share/base-files/dot.bashrc
/usr/share/doc/adduser/examples/adduser.local.conf.examples/bash.bashrc
/usr/share/doc/adduser/examples/adduser.local.conf.examples/skel/dot.bashrc

The /root/.bashrc file will not be shown because we ran the command as a normal user that doesn’t have access permissions to the /root directory.

If the result list is long, for better readability, you can pipe the output to the less command:

locate .bashrc | less
  1. To search for all .md files on the system
locate *.md
  1. To search all .py files and display only 10 results
locate -n 10 *.py
  1. To performs case-insensitive search.
locate -i readme.md

Output

/home/linuxize/p1/readme.md
/home/linuxize/p2/README.md
/home/linuxize/p3/ReadMe.md
  1. To return the number of all files containing .bashrc in their name.
locate -c .bashrc

Output

6
  1. The following would return only the existing .json files on the file system.
locate -e *.json
  1. To run a more complex search the -r (--regexp) option is used. To search for all .mp4 and .avi files on your system and ignore case.
locate --regex -i "(\.mp4|\.avi)"

Syntax:

1.  locate [OPTION]... PATTERN...

Additional Flags and their Functionalities:

Short Flag Long Flag Description
-A --all It is used to display only entries that match all PATTERNs instead of requiring only one of them to match.
-b --basename It is used to match only the base name against the specified patterns.
-c --count It is used for writing the number matching entries instead of writing file names on standard output.
-d --database DBPATH It is used to replace the default database with DBPATH.
-e --existing It is used to display only entries that refer to existing files during the command is executed.
-L --follow If the --existing option is specified, It is used for checking whether files exist and follow trailing symbolic links. It will omit the broken symbolic links to the output. This is the default behavior. The opposite behavior can be specified using the --nofollow option.
-h --help It is used to display the help documentation that contains a summary of the available options.
-i --ignore-case It is used to ignore case sensitivity of the specified patterns.
-p --ignore-spaces It is used to ignore punctuation and spaces when matching patterns.
-t --transliterate It is used to ignore accents using iconv transliteration when matching patterns.
-l --limit, -n LIMIT If this option is specified, the command exit successfully after finding LIMIT entries.
-m --mmap It is used to ignore the compatibility with BSD, and GNU locate.
-0 --null It is used to separate the entries on output using the ASCII NUL character instead of writing each entry on a separate line.
-S --statistics It is used to write statistics about each read database to standard output instead of searching for files.
-r --regexp REGEXP It is used for searching a basic regexp REGEXP.
--regex - It is used to describe all PATTERNs as extended regular expressions.
-V --version It is used to display the version and license information.
-w --wholename It is used for matching only the whole path name in specified patterns.