From LQWiki

The locate command will return all files and directories that contain the search string in its name. It is basically equivalent to using

find / -name *expression*

Except that it is much faster. It does this by querying the locate database which is updated periodically by the system (usually as a cron job).

Example:

$ locate passwd
/etc/init.d/rpasswdd
/etc/pam.d/passwd
/etc/pam.d/rpasswd
/etc/passwd
/etc/passwd.old
/etc/samba/smbpasswd

The locate database can be defined by changing the value of the LOCATE_PATH environment variable. The database is typically updated daily. If you wish to force an update use the updatedb or "locate -u" command.

You can use regular expressions with locate through the -r flag:

locate -r "core\.[0-9]"

returns:

/usr/share/man/man4/pcmcia_core.4.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/mincore.2.gz

(It will also find core.[pid] files, which is handy.)

See also

• find
• which