lfs-book/appendixa/findutils-desc.xml

<sect2>
<title>Contents</title>

<para>
The Findutils package contains the find, locate, updatedb, xargs,
frcode, code and bigram programs.
</para>

</sect2>

<sect2><title>Description</title>

<sect3><title>Find</title>

<para>
The find program searches for files in a directory hierarchy which match
a certain criteria. If no criteria is given, it lists all files in the
current directory and it's subdirectories.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>Locate</title>

<para>
Locate scans a database which contain all files and directories on a
filesystem. This program lists the files and directories in this
database matching a certain criteria. If a user is looking for a file this
program will scan the database and tell him exactly where the files he
requested are located. This only makes sense if the locate database is
fairly up-to-date else it will provide out-of-date information.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>Updatedb</title>

<para>
The updatedb program updates the locate database. It scans the entire
file system (including other file system that are currently mounted
unless it is told not to do so) and puts every directory and file it finds
into the database that's used by the locate program which retrieves this
information. It's a good practice to update this database once a day to
have it up-to-date whenever it is needed.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>Xargs</title>

<para>
The xargs command applies a command to a list of files. If there is a need to
perform the same command on multiple files, a file can be created that
contains all these files (one per line) and use xargs to perform that
command on the list.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>frcode</title>

<para>
updatedb runs a program called frcode to compress the list of file names
using front-compression, which reduces the database size by a factor of
4 to 5.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>code</title>

<para>
code is the ancestor of frcode. It was used in older-style locate databases.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>bigram</title>
	
<para>
bigram is used together with code to produce older-style locate databases. To
learn more about these last three programs, read the locatedb.5 manual page.
</para>

</sect3>

</sect2>