---
name: "plocate-build"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "plocate"
version: "1.1.25-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/plocate-build"
---

# plocate-build(8)

generate index for plocate

## NAME

plocate-build - generate index for plocate

## SYNOPSIS

**plocate-build** *\[OPTION\]...* *MLOCATE\_DB* *PLOCATE\_DB*

## DESCRIPTION

**plocate-build** creates an index from  [**plocate**(1)](/plocate/1.md) from an index earlier generated by [**updatedb**(8)](/updatedb/8.md) from the [**mlocate**(1)](/mlocate/1.md) package. Most users would rather want to use plocate's own [**updatedb**(8)](/updatedb/8.md), which is more direct. If *PLOCATE\_DB* already exists, it will be overwritten (non-atomically). The file is created such that it is not world-readable, as the final access check is done by [**plocate**(1)](/plocate/1.md) during the search.

## OPTIONS

- **-b**, **--block-size** *SIZE*

  Create blocks containing *SIZE* filenames each, compress them together, and treat them as the same element in the posting lists. This makes the index smaller (because the compression algorithm gets more context to work with, and because there are fewer elements in each posting list), but also makes posting lists less precise, moving more work to weeding out false positives after posting list intersection.

  Making this number larger will make linear search (for **--regex**, or very short patterns) faster, with diminishing returns around 256 filenames per block. However, making it too large will cause more false positives, reducing overall performance for typical queries. The default value is 32. Setting it to 1 makes one (compressed) block per filename.

- **-p**, **--plaintext**

  Treat the input as plain text, with entries delimited by newlines, instead of an mlocate database.

- **-l**, **--require-visibility** *FLAG*

  Set the “require file visibility before reporting it” flag in the generated database to *FLAG*. The default is yes, even for an mlocate database with the flag originally set to no (although the latter may change in the future).

- **--help**

  Print out usage information, then exit successfully.

- **--version**

  Print out version information, then exit successfully.

## AUTHOR

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

## SEE ALSO

[**plocate**(1)](/plocate/1.md), **/etc/cron.daily/plocate** (which is called **update-plocate.sh** in the source distribution)