Re: Using database to find file doublettes in my computer

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 12:36:42PM +0000, Sam Mason wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 11:22:47AM -0800, Lothar Behrens wrote:
> > I have a problem to find as fast as possible files that are double or
> > in other words, identical.
> > Also identifying those files that are not identical.
> 
> I'd probably just take a simple Unix command line approach, something
> like:
> 
>   find /base/dir -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | sort | uniq -Dw 32

You save a little bit of time by using

find /base/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -Dw 32

> this will give you a list of files whose contents are identical
> (according to an MD5 hash).  An alternative would be to put the hashes
> into a database and run the matching up there.
> 
> 
>   Sam

Gerhard