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Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)

Terminal - Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)
find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
2009-09-21 00:24:14
User: syssyphus
Functions: find md5sum sort uniq xargs
34
Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)

This dup finder saves time by comparing size first, then md5sum, it doesn't delete anything, just lists them.

Alternatives

There are 5 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq --all-repeated=separate -w 33 | cut -c 35-
2009-08-04 07:05:12
User: infinull
Functions: cut find md5sum sort uniq
17

Calculates md5 sum of files. sort (required for uniq to work). uniq based on only the hash. use cut ro remove the hash from the result.

fdupes -r .
2011-02-19 17:02:30
User: Vilemirth
Tags: xargs parallel
5

If you have the fdupes command, you'll save a lot of typing. It can do recursive searches (-r,-R) and it allows you to interactively select which of the duplicate files found you wish to keep or delete.

find -type d -name ".svn" -prune -o -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type d -name ".svn" -prune -o -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
2010-01-28 09:45:29
User: 2chg
Functions: find md5sum sort uniq xargs
1

Improvement of the command "Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)" when searching for duplicate files in a directory containing a subversion working copy. This way the (multiple dupicates) in the meta-information directories are ignored.

Can easily be adopted for other VCS as well. For CVS i.e. change ".svn" into ".csv":

find -type d -name ".csv" -prune -o -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type d -name ".csv" -prune -o -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
find . -type f -exec md5 '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -f 3 -d | sed -e "s/.*(\(.*\)).*/\1/"
2012-01-14 08:54:12
User: noahspurrier
Functions: find sed sort uniq
0

This works on Mac OS X using the `md5` command instead of `md5sum`, which works similarly, but has a different output format. Note that this only prints the name of the duplicates, not the original file. This is handy because you can add `| xargs rm` to the end of the command to delete all the duplicates while leaving the original.

find -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\n" | sort | uniq -d | parallel find -type f -size {}c | parallel md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate
2010-01-28 08:40:18
Functions: find md5sum sort uniq
Tags: xargs parallel
-1

A bit shorter and parallelized. Depending on the speed of your cpu and your disk this may run faster.

Parallel is from https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

As an alternative, check out http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/ in case you don't mind using a GUI for this. It gives you the option of hard linking the duplicate files and doing other lint-y tasks. Available as package 'fslint' at least in debian/ubuntu.

Comment by bwoodacre 123 weeks and 4 days ago

Thanks for the FSlint reference. Note fslint uses much the same mechanism underneath and has a CLI mode.

http://fslint.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fslint/findup

Comment by pixelbeat 123 weeks and 4 days ago

awsome, much faster then fdupes.

Comment by dakunesu 123 weeks and 3 days ago

Isn't the -D redundant?

Comment by dennisw 122 weeks ago

yes it is... thanks for noticing, I fixed it.

Comment by syssyphus 122 weeks ago

How can you mass delete these files once they're found? (I'd like to keep one of them)

Comment by matthewbauer 118 weeks ago

you might want to look at fdupes or fslint in order to help with hardlinking / deleting, etc... my command is really just a quick hack to list them.

Comment by syssyphus 118 weeks ago

There is also perfect match:

http://pmatch.rubyforge.org/

That's especially if you are commandline fan.

Comment by zabuch 105 weeks and 1 day ago

Fantastic, man. this is truly great.

Comment by oernii3 46 weeks and 5 days ago

There is also rmlint:

https://github.com/sahib/rmlint

Example:

rmlint [path] -GYX -v5

+ Gives you similiar results

+ you can pipe it directly to 'sh'

+ it's lots faster as additionally fingerprints are done and a few other tricks.

+ it has also other options ;-)

Comment by sahib 44 weeks and 5 days ago

Your point of view

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