Comparing files in a folder

Not sure this is a Newbie Corner type question, but I did not see where else to go, so here it is...
Scenario: I have two seperate folders that contain a lot of files, some again in sub-folders. Now I need to find out which files happen to be in both folders, and they must be identical as well. I know how to run diff to compare two files, but that barely scratches the surface of what to do here, seeing as we talk about several dozen files in both folders, possibly even arranged in folders named differently.
I am looking for an elegant solution to this that goes beyond comparing them visually in dolphin.... Any hints?

"diff -qr dir1 dir2" works fine, except for special files like symlinks that point to nonexistent locations (I discovered this yesterday when checking my new arch copy...) diff will report that it can't open the file in such case.
I used meld to avoid this problem, but it used a lot of memory for some files and that made linux close all running programs, which was bad.
Edit: ah, if "possibly even arranged in folders named differently" means what I think it means, then davvil's solution is closer to what you need, yeah...
Last edited by stqn (2010-11-18 01:15:40)

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Comparing files in a folder with those in another folder with multiple subfolders

is there a non-terminal tool that i can buy that will do the following?:
i want to compare the files that are nicely sorted into nested sub-folders and sub-sub folder in /one/ folder with those that are sitting - in bulk - in another folder.
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i wonder if anyone has tried Araxis Merge?
Merge for Mac is here
<http://www.araxis.com/merge_mac/index.html>
It does folder sync -- and there are quite a few other folder sync tools out there. But that's not what you asked.
files that are nicely sorted into nested sub-folders and sub-sub folder […]
sort the remaining files […] in with the files that are already sorted
That's not folder sync'ing. I doubt you'll find an app which does that out-of-the-box.

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My goal is to compare files for similarities and then give some output, that's not too important.
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I want to develop an application that reads all the files in a folder, and once its done reading those files it reads all the files again.
The purpose for this application is to read all the files in a folder that are continuously being stored in that folder, so that when a new file is created, that file is also read by the application. I then need to compare the date and time in which the file was created to the actual date and time of the system, so that way I can get the most recent file, and then I will do other operations with this file.
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Go to Solution.

I think that I just went the wrong direction.
What I wanted to do in the first place, was to rename and overwrite every new file in a directory with the same name and file extension, so that every new file overwrites the old file. The thing is that the list folder only lists the files the first time and then keeps on telling me there are no files to be read even though there are new files.
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Attachments:
Overwrite Files.vi ‏12 KB

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I'm not sure if this is something Automator or perhaps Terminal can do, hoping someone might be able to offer guidance or suggestions.
I have two folders filled with files of photographs.
First folder has approx 15,000 files.
Second folder has approx 1,200 files.
I need to compare the files in the two folders and remove duplicates from the First folder. In other words, the 1,200 files in the Second folder are also in the First folder and they need to be removed from the First folder, leaving 15,000 - 1,200 = 13,800 files in the First folder.
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Old post, sorry, but for the sake of trying to answer it:
The method described here can accomplish the goal, as I understand it.
http://texo.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/comparing-large-directories-fast-in-osx-or- linux/
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moved files from library folder and attempted to put them back after experiencing major changes and problem. This is not correcting the situation what can be done to restore it back to what it was before I started?

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