XYplorer Beta Club

serendipity wrote:But thats just me, maybe you have thought of something great already.

See my "ADD" in my previous post. Is that great?

admin wrote:

serendipity wrote:But thats just me, maybe you have thought of something great already.

See my "ADD" in my previous post. Is that great?

Haa, they say all great ideas have to simple. Sounds neat to me. But, I would have to try it to believe it.

In order to see what is likely needed, I'd think one would try out a handful of products that specialize in that task...but one of the products that I use sometimes (xplorer2) requires the paid vers to activate the "Find Dups" function, and I just use the free vers...

My initial glance at one specialty product shows that one gives it the two paths that should be compared, whether they be drives or a selected folder within that...

CRC seems to be a typical method used, but it also appears as it would require a LOT of computing for a set of files...true?

admin wrote:ADD: if I'd add a CRC column to the file list, and you sort by that column, and I add a little coloring service that colors all column items that are the same as the column item in the previous row: wouldn't that be a nice dupe locator?

Kinda, but only if there's a "sort by dupes" and this won't help you if you are searching through multiple directories. Actually I guess it will with search, but without search caching it could be painful...

I always kinda imagined a button you hit that says "Find dupes in selected drives/directories"

j_c_hallgren wrote:In order to see what is likely needed, I'd think one would try out a handful of products that specialize in that task...but one of the products that I use sometimes (xplorer2) requires the paid vers to activate the "Find Dups" function, and I just use the free vers...

"Foldermatch" as mentioned in my previous post is a paid version as well, but you could check out their homepage, or if needed, I could do some screenshots.

lukescammell wrote:I always kinda imagined a button you hit that says "Find dupes in selected drives/directories"

And I'd see that when one clicked on that button, you'd be then prompted to select the "other" drive/dir to match against...something like what one sees when you pick a folder to save to, etc.

Seems there's two schools of thought on dupes... one says "I want to find dupes in this and that directory(ies)" and the other says "find my dupes". Any way to satisfy everyone?

I use Ace Utilities which has a Duplicate File finder - it has options for many find criteria, same file name, size, content CRC-32, MD5 plus filters etc.

The interesting thing is the warning they show before using the find vis.

Duplicate files can appear on your system for a number of reasons, and can have a number of detrimental results aside from wasting hard drive space. Various applications may install the same files at different locations on your system, or you may copy or download the same files into different folders on your system without knowing it. Sometimes the only result of this is wasted hard drive space, but many times different copies of the same vital system file can cause havoc.

"Find Duplicate Files" tool can easily find and remove duplicates of the same file.

Note: The files that you delete using this tool are entirely your selection. Ace Utilities can only find duplicate copies of files; it can't tell which one is the duplicate or the unneeded one. In short, not all files found are candidates for removal.

My thoughts on this is that to include it in XY diverts energy from other better uses - if this facility is needed then use a product that has done the work already - use XY to do the work the others can't do.

graham wrote:My thoughts on this is that to include it in XY diverts energy from other better uses - if this facility is needed then use a product that has done the work already - use XY to do the work the others can't do.

I agree on this one...at this time, I'd much prefer that Don add something that I still have to resort to Win Expl on occasion for, as I'd asked for in http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?t=519 which is ability to find files via Registry "file type" dropdown...

graham wrote:My thoughts on this is that to include it in XY diverts energy from other better uses - if this facility is needed then use a product that has done the work already - use XY to do the work the others can't do.

Yes, I'd like to think the same (I never used a dupe finder in my life). For some reason, however, find dupes is a very popular feature (I know from my daily heap of wish emails...), so I gather -- if it is easy to add -- I could do it. A CRC column would be easy (although of course very heavy on the CPU -- but then you only use it when you need it).

Anyway, I'm just checking the possibilities out of curiosity. I will now try to follow the road map. BTW, I just added "integrated backup management" (working title) to the road map.

Take a look at the Duplicate Finder that Dopus has.

I have used (and own) several Folder/File Comparison/Merge programs. My fav so far is Beyond Compare. But they are all way more involved than what is needed for XY, in my opinion and looking at them will only be messy, if u ask me - so many features, so little time. Much of those features we don't need.

When I tested Dopus, the Dup Finder seemed to be a very appropriate feature for that file management tool and I think would add value to XY to future users (and as marketable feature). It is a tool to use when the urge to PURGE overwhelms a person... and that is exactly what I loved so much about XY right from the beginning: it allowed me to CLEAN UP and GET ORGANIZED SO EASILY -- got me in the mood to face my demons!!! (I love that about XY...sorry I have to shout it out!!) So Dup Finder is reallllly fitting here (in XY), I think. It fits the use! (In my humble....)

I wish somebody with Dopus would go look at it and report back exactly what it does. I liked it.

lukescammell wrote:Seems there's two schools of thought on dupes... one says "I want to find dupes in this and that directory(ies)" and the other says "find my dupes". Any way to satisfy everyone?

Don't know about this, but i think there are two ways a dupe finder should work, two different ways of dealing with things:

(a) User sets a "reference file" and ask to get all dupes of that file (in specified locations only). This could be useful to locate all the dupes (if any) of one, or more, given files one might be after/looking for.
This could be an interesting feature, but it would require lots of CPU and time to make such a search - as XY would have to calculate CRCs of all files of the same size as the "reference"(/source). If not too much work, it might be a nice thing... Reference could be either focused item or selected item(s) (if more than one are allowed)

(b) User asks for all dupes (in specified locations only). Now this might be the more common use for dupe finders, I guess, and one I know I use from time to time - mostly to do some clean up. Having a CRC column on List might not do the trick though, as one doesn't expect from such an operation to get a list of all files found, but only dupes.

Eg. if i start such a dupe finding operation on D:\ I don't want a list of all files on the drive D, only those for which were found at least two copies, ie dupes. Items should then be grouped so one can easily spot groups of duplicates (as there may be more than one (eg 2 files) per group). And besides, the ability to sort the groups by dates, size, number of files within group, etc would be interesting

Support of fast CRC calculation - including for (very) large files) - is a must here, as well as some kind of "database" to extract and group all dupes. I think a simple CRC column would not do the trick here, and I think we're obviously talking about a complete application of its own (ie. not a file manager)


Well, those are my thoughts at least...