Duplicate File finder - can this be scripted?

Help & Support
1

Hello, I have a question about the Duplicate File finder utility.

I use this feature very frequently to search a set of about 10-12 folders for duplicates. The panel conveniently saves the folders and search options from one session to the next, so I don't have to reselect them. All well and good.

Now I need to search a SECOND, different set of folders for duplicates. So I need to search two different sets of folders with two different search conditions. (The searches are not related to each other, so I don't want to do them both at once.) Since the Find Duplicates panel only retains the last configuration, I now have to manually reconfigure my searches each time. This gets tedious since I have a bunch of folders to configure.

Can the Duplicate Files panel be scripted so that I can have 2 (or more) sets of search folders and conditions? I searched the docs and nothing jumped out at me. Or is there is an alternative approach? The only work-around I can think of is using Windows Libraries, to create a library of target search folders, so that I would only need to pick a single library to do a search on... assuming that would even work....

2

You could make filters for your duplicate searches, like described here, so you don't need any scripting:

http://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus11/index.html#!Documents/Duplicates.htm

http://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus11/index.html#!Documents/Filtered_Operations.htm

3

You might be able to set up a button for searching each folder.

What are the details of the two searches you want do to? i.e. Folder paths and any other settings you want to be different in each case.

4

Thanks for the suggestions!

Leo: regarding details... for example, one search consists of doing a a search of, say 12 different folders on my C:\ drive. The second search would be 10 or so other folders on a different drive, but only for files with a *.jpg or *mp4 extension. I can easily do one or the other, but what I can't figure out (yet) is a way to quickly configure the utility panel. My pain point is re-selecting all those folders for each search.

5

A command a bit like this will automate the duplicate finder, making it look in the two specified folders, using the MD5 mode:

Find DUPES RECURSE CLEAR MD5 IN "C:\Folder1" "C:\Folder2"

I don't think there is currently a way to add filtering to the mix when automating it from a command, but we can probably add that as I think it simply needs plumbing in. (Pending a proper look at the code.)

6

Awesome! I think I can work with that, or by setting up filters and manually selecting the one I need if I can't get that to work. Thanks for the tips abr and leo!

7

Leo, I was able to use your code successfully, but as you indicated, it appears that filtering is not supported in this mode. I tried:

Find *.(jpg|gif|bmp) DUPES RECURSE... etc.

But the resulting scan appears to ignore the filtering and grabs all duplicates. Is this syntax correct, or it there an issue with Opus as you suggested?

8

It's not currently supported by the command.