Trouble with my locate database... "database header corrupt"

The error message indicates that there's a problem with the header of the database file, and a character in the bigram is outside the expected range of 0, 32-127.

The solution for me after some research was to go to the directory of the update db

Rebuild the locate database: The locate command relies on a database of files in your system. If this database becomes corrupt, you can rebuild it. On a Mac, you can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

cd /usr/libexec/

and then run

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

Which rebuilt my locate database

NOTE that this can take a while and there isn't any progress bar so make sure to just wait till the command exists I think thats what was happening to me when I tried to update the db the first time I exited too early

I appreciate your reply Mr. Hoffman, I didn't even know you could assign aliases like that, it may have solved my problem! I agree that mdfind is far superior in that regard, my issue was that I have some apple script arrays written and executed through multiple python programs/classes that utilizes the locate command, the python code is extensive and integrates between Apple script executions and python library calls, in the end this code can do some low level terminal commands as well as other automation, the code needs some updating to use mdfind instead of locate, which is why I couldn't just use mdfind like I would on a terminal.

I still find it strange that there isn't a simple setting to adjust when the locate db updates.

For context by the way the reason Im doing this is Im very new to mac although I have utilized some linux in the past, I was big on AutoHotKey and other scripting on windows so I found the best way to do similar things is using apple script/Python and automating commands, in the end its all productivity software I build to help make things faster and less annoying.