NAME

       plocate - find files by name, quickly

SYNOPSIS

       plocate [OPTION]...  PATTERN...

DESCRIPTION

       plocate  finds  all files on the system matching the given pattern (or all of the patterns
       if multiple are given). It does this by means of an index made  by  updatedb(8)  or  (less
       commonly) converted from another index by plocate-build(8).

       plocate  is  largely  argument-compatible with mlocate(1), but is significantly faster. In
       particular, it rarely needs to scan through its entire database,  unless  the  pattern  is
       very short (less than three bytes) or you want to search for a regular expression. It does
       not try to maintain compatibility with BSD locate, or  non-UTF-8  filenames  and  locales.
       Most  I/O is done asynchronously, but the results are synchronized so that output comes in
       the same order every time.

       When multiple patterns are given, plocate will search for files that match  all  of  them.
       This  is the main incompatibility with mlocate(1), which searches for files that match one
       or more patterns, unless the -A option is given.

       By default, patterns are taken to be substrings to search  for.   If  at  least  one  non-
       escaped  globbing metacharacter (*, ? or []) is given, that pattern is instead taken to be
       a glob pattern (which means it needs to start and end in *  for  a  substring  match).  If
       --regexp  is  given,  patterns  are instead taken to be (non-anchored) POSIX basic regular
       expressions, and if --regex is given, patterns are taken  to  be  POSIX  extended  regular
       expressions.  All of this matches mlocate(1) behavior.

       Like  mlocate(1), plocate shows all files visible to the calling user (by virtue of having
       read and execute permissions on all parent directories), and none that are not,  by  means
       of  running  with  the setgid bit set to access the index (which is built as root), but by
       testing visibility as the calling user.

OPTIONS

       -A, --all
              Ignored for compatibility with mlocate(1).

       -b, --basename
              Match only against the file name portion of the path name, ie., the directory names
              will  be  excluded  from  the match (but still printed). This does not speed up the
              search, but can suppress uninteresting matches.

       -c, --count
              Do not print each match. Instead, count them, and print out a total number  at  the
              end.

       -d, --database DBPATH
              Find  matches  in the given database, instead of /var/lib/plocate/plocate.db.  This
              argument can be given multiple times, to search multiple  databases.   It  is  also
              possible  to  give  multiple  databases  in  one  argument,  separated  by :.  (Any
              character, including : and \, can be escaped by prepending a \.)

       -e, --existing
              Print only entries that refer to files existing at the time  locate  is  run.  Note
              that  unlike mlocate(1), symlinks are not followed by default (and indeed, there is
              no option to change this).

       -i, --ignore-case
              Do a case-insensitive match as given  by  the  current  locale  (default  is  case-
              sensitive,  byte-by-byte  match). Note that plocate does not support the full range
              of Unicode case folding rules; in particular, searching for ß  will  not  give  you
              matches  on ss even in a German locale. Also note that this option will be somewhat
              slower than a case-sensitive match, since it needs to generate more candidates  for
              searching the index.

       -p, --ignore-spaces
              Ignore punctuation and spaces when matching patterns.

       -l, --limit LIMIT
              Stop searching after LIMIT matches have been found. If --count is given, the number
              printed out will be at most LIMIT.

       -N, --literal
              Print entry names without quoting. Normally, plocate will escape special characters
              in  filenames,  so that they are safe for consumption by typical shells (similar to
              the GNU coreutils shell-escape-always quoting style), unless printing  to  a  pipe,
              but this options will turn off such quoting.

       -0, --null
              Instead  of  writing  a  newline  after every match, write a NUL (ASCII 0). This is
              useful for creating unambiguous output when it is to be processed  by  other  tools
              (like xargs(1)), as filenames are allowed to contain embedded newlines.

       -r, --regexp
              Patterns  are  taken  to be POSIX basic regular expressions.  See regex(7) for more
              information. Note that this forces a linear scan through the entire database, which
              is slow.

       --regex
              Like  --regexp,  but  patterns  are  instead  taken  to  be  POSIX extended regular
              expressions.

       -w, --wholename
              Match against the entire path name. This is the default,  so  unless  -b  is  given
              first  (see  above),  it  will  not  do  anything.  This option thus exists only as
              compatibility with mlocate(1).

       --help Print out usage information, then exit successfully.

       --version
              Print out version information, then exit successfully.

ENVIRONMENT

       LOCATE_PATH
              If given, appended after the list of --database paths (whether an explicit is given
              or  the default is used).  Colon-delimiting and character escaping follows the same
              rules as for --database.

AUTHOR

       Steinar H. Gunderson <steinar+plocate@gunderson.no>

SEE ALSO

       plocate-build(8), mlocate(1), updatedb(8)