[OSX-Users] Re: reconciling duplicated files/directories/backups

[Marcus Cobden]

Ah right.

This'd be too complex to do in a shell, but you could build a matrix 'relevant' of information about each file (basename, timestamps, md5, etc) and then throw it through some kind of clustering algorithm.

That might be overkill :P

Also I can't see an easy way to incorporate directory structures into that, but that might not be needed.

MArcus

On 14 Dec 2011, at 13:12, Les A Carr wrote:

> That's fine if you have two candidate duplicate directories, but I want to identify all the files across various hard disks that may be the same as any others!
> --
> les
> 
> 
> On 14 Dec 2011, at 13:02, Marcus Cobden wrote:
> 
>> There's always the Unix diff command
>> 
>> diff -r dir1 dir2
>> 
>> I prefer to add in the -u option, and also view a colorised version.
>> Also I'm pretty sure you can get it to only tell you that files differ, and not how.
>> 
>> Finally, the timestamps on the files might be useful, so if you move/copy them around, take care to preserve them.
>> 
>> Marcus
>> 
>> On 14 Dec 2011, at 12:08, Les A Carr wrote:
>> 
>>> I am writing some simple tools to help me reconcile multiple copies of files/directories from various attempts to back up or duplicate information across machines for safekeeping.
>>> 
>>> Before I go too far down this road (shell scripts and md5 checksums!) does anyone know of any software that already does this?
>>> --
>>> Les
>> 
>> 
> 
>