[sllug-members]: GUI for finding and deleting duplicate files?

[Bill Peeler]

On Sat, 03 Nov 2007 10:31:11 -0600
Marc Christensen <marc at mecworks.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I was wondering if anyone knows of a good GUI solution for finding and 
> deleting duplicate files.

do you mean duplicate by file name or by contents or both?

> I have a directory structure for my photographic images organized like this:
> 
>     ./images
>             /20051003-101nd200
>             /20051104-101nd200
>             /20060320-100olymp
>             /20070309-101nd200
>             etc...
> 
> where the directory name includes the date of the dump followed by the 
> camera's directory from the memory card.  This allows me to easily 
> organize the photos roughly by date.  However, I have a bad habit of not 
> always formatting my memory cards after a dump :) So, successive 
> directories may contain pictures which have already been dumped.  Now, 
> this creates a problem.  If I decide to do further work on a picture or 
> set of pictures, there's no real guarantee that I'll work on the 
> image(s) dumped first.  So a project (located in the same dir usually) 
> may be associated with the first dump or any dump made later making the 
> removing of duplicates only by date sub-optimal.  In projects, I don't 
> modify the originals but I work in the same directory.

I'm confused here.  You're afraid you'll edit a file and then dump
from the camera and get another copy of the unedited file but with a
later date, right?

> There are several CLI tools that find duplicate files that I am familiar 
> with.  The issue is that while doing this programatically would be fast 
> and efficient (I could just delete the newer of two or more identical 
> files), this could mess with my highly awesome and coveted process of 
> photo organization as outlined above.
> 
> So, while a lot slower, I'd like to be able to preview duplicates in a 
> GUI and make sure that I'm saving the right ones.

I've got programs and scripts that show dupes by date, cksums and
results of cmp.  I've called visual diff utils (for source code
comparisons) from the scripts before.  If the util to view pix will
take the name of the file to view on the command line, you'd be set.
Before I could choose (or build) a script that did exactly what you
want, I'd have to have a better understanding of what that is.

If you want to take this off line feel free, or we could continue to
entertain the rest of the pluglist if you'd rather.

bill