Locate via Spotlight on OS X

The locate command is a standard and widely-used tool on most Unix systems for finding filenames which match a given pattern. The database is maintained by updatedb. Similarly, the Spotlight tool in Mac OS X is a fast and efficient way to search the names and contents of files. The command-line tool mdfind can be used to query the same metadata database. New installations of OS X, however, come with locate disabled:

$ locate foo

WARNING: The locate database (/var/db/locate.database) does not exist.
To create the database, run the following command:

  sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

Please be aware that the database can take some time to generate; once
the database has been created, this message will no longer appear.

Rather than enabling locate and updatedb using launchctl, and thus maintaining two separate databases, one can instead define a locate function which uses mdfind to query the metadata database that’s already being maintained by OS X and used by Spotlight. To do so, add the following to your .bashrc or .zshrc as the case may be:

function locate { mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == '$@'wc"; }

Via Mac OS X Hints.