whereis results are cached?

[freethread]

Usually I use whereis command to check if a program is installed. I want to find if java is installed, there are other methods to check installed programs, but I executed # whereis java. The result was

java: /usr/ports/archivers/unzip/work/stage/usr/local/share/java

Ok, my /usr/ports directory is a bit dirty. To clean compile failures I then executed # rm -rf /usr/ports/*/*/work. Now I re-execute the whereis command:

# whereis java
java: /usr/ports/archivers/unzip/work/stage/usr/local/share/java

Same result. So go to check if the file/directory exists.

# ls /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
total 16
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  -  3.2k 2014.08.15 12:11 Makefile
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  -  123B 2014.08.15 12:11 distinfo
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  -  512B 2014.08.18 01:11 files
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  -  1.0k 2014.01.22 16:44 pkg-descr

The work directory does not exist, so the only thing I can say is that the whereis result is cached somewhere. In the manual page there is nothing about cached results or flags acting on it, what is wrong?

 

[kpa]

Some of the results are cached because they come from locate(1) that uses its own index database for quick results. If you run whereis(1) with the -x option it shouldn't try to use locate(1) after being unsuccesful at locating the requested file by other methods.

 -x      Do not use “expensive” tools when searching for source directo‐
         ries.  Normally, after unsuccessfully searching all the first-
         level subdirectories of the source directory list, whereis will
         ask locate(1) to find the entry on its behalf.  Since this can
         take much longer, it can be turned off with -x

 

[talsamon]

man whereis
...
-a      Report all matches instead of only the first of each requested
             type.

-b      Search for binaries.

....

whereis without parameter looks for the first entry in the database. If you run portsclean -C and /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate- you got another entry (as first).

 

[freethread]

Ok, many thanks @kpa and @talsamom. I know about the -a and -b flags, I use them when needed. What surprised me was the fact I had some uncleaned port work directory and the after cleaning them, whereis still report the deleted directories. Thank you both again.