Mlocate

mlocate is a locate/updatedb implementation. The 'm' stands for "merging": updatedb reuses the existing database to avoid rereading most of the file system, which makes updatedb faster and does not trash the system caches as much.

apt install mlocate

/etc/cron.daily/mlocate

usr/bin/mlocate --help
Usage: locate [OPTION]... [PATTERN]...
Search for entries in a mlocate database.

 -A, --all              only print entries that match all patterns
 -b, --basename         match only the base name of path names
 -c, --count            only print number of found entries
 -d, --database DBPATH  use DBPATH instead of default database (which is
                        /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db)
 -e, --existing         only print entries for currently existing files
 -L, --follow           follow trailing symbolic links when checking file
                        existence (default)
 -h, --help             print this help
 -i, --ignore-case      ignore case distinctions when matching patterns
 -p, --ignore-spaces    ignore punctuation and spaces when matching patterns
 -t, --transliterate    ignore accents using iconv transliteration when
                        matching patterns
 -l, --limit, -n LIMIT  limit output (or counting) to LIMIT entries
 -m, --mmap             ignored, for backward compatibility
 -P, --nofollow, -H     don't follow trailing symbolic links when checking file
                        existence
 -0, --null             separate entries with NUL on output
 -S, --statistics       don't search for entries, print statistics about each
                        used database
 -q, --quiet            report no error messages about reading databases
 -r, --regexp REGEXP    search for basic regexp REGEXP instead of patterns
     --regex            patterns are extended regexps
 -s, --stdio            ignored, for backward compatibility
 -V, --version          print version information
 -w, --wholename        match whole path name (default)

Report bugs to https://pagure.io/mlocate.

Related terms

• Disk io
• updatedb.mlocate

See also

• locate, mlocate, updatedb, plocate, mdfind