Locate (Unix)

locateInitial release| 1982; 44 years ago (1982)

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Operating system| Unix and Unix-like
Type| Command

`locate` is a Unix utility which serves to find files on filesystems. It searches through a prebuilt database of files generated by the `updatedb` command or by a daemon and compressed using incremental encoding. It operates significantly faster than `find`, but requires regular updating of the database. This sacrifices overall efficiency (because of the regular interrogation of filesystems even when no user needs information) and absolute accuracy (since the database does not update in real time) for significant speed improvements, particularly on very large filesystems.

`locate` was first created in 1982.[1] The BSD and GNU Findutils versions derive from the original implementation.[2] Their primary database is world-readable, so the index is built as an unprivileged user. `locate` command is also included in MacOS.

`mlocate` (Merging Locate) and the earlier `slocate` (Secure Locate) use a restricted-access database, only showing filenames accessible to the user.[3][4]

`plocate` uses posting lists. Like `mlocate` and `slocate`, it only shows files if `find` would list it.[5] Compared to `mlocate`, it is much faster, and its index is smaller.[6][7]

## See also

* mdfind related command in MacOS

## References

1. ↑ Woods, James A. (1983-01-15). "Finding Files Fast". ;login: (Usenix) 8 (1): 8–10. https://archive.org/details/login-feb83/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater. Retrieved 2016-03-27.
2. ↑ "Finding Files". Free Software Foundation. 2012-11-17. https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_node/find_html/Introduction.html#Introduction. "GNU locate and its associated utilities were originally written by James Woods, with enhancements by David MacKenzie."
3. ↑ Miloslav Trmač (2005). "mlocate". http://carolina.mff.cuni.cz/~trmac/blog/mlocate/. "...faster and does not trash the system caches as much...attempts to be compatible to GNU locate, when it does not conflict with slocate compatibility."
4. ↑ Kevin Lindsay (1999). "Secure Locate". http://www.geekreview.org/slocate/. "...will also check file permissions and ownership so that users will not see files they do not have access to."
5. ↑ Gunderson, Steinar. "plocate, a much faster locate" (in en). https://plocate.sesse.net.
6. ↑ Gunderson, Steinar. "plocate(1)". Arch manual pages. https://man.archlinux.org/man/community/plocate/plocate.1.en.
7. ↑ "plocate" (in English). Kali Linux Tools. https://www.kali.org/tools/plocate/.

## External links

* GNU Findutils
* mlocate
* `locate(1)` – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
* `locate(1)` – OpenBSD General Commands Manual
* `locate(1)` – Linux User's Manual – User Commands

Variants:

* plocate \- Variant faster than mlocate, with a smaller index.
* rlocate \- Variant using kernel module and daemon for continuous updates.
* KwickFind \- KDE GUI frontend for locate
* Locate32 for Windows - GPL'ed graphical Windows variant (no longer available)

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