Spolight result and Applescript in harmony

Question

Hello,
I'm new to Applescript and what I'm interested in doing seems like a great job for it.
I've made a spotlight search on a single folder in the file system and saved the search to its default location (/Users/alex/Library/Saved Searches/searchQuery). My search was for all pdf files in and beneath its directory. My list of results contain many duplicates and I'd like to thin it so that it shows or selects only unique files (this means if there are duplicates, show only one copy).
I was thinking that if I iterate through the list of results by comparing the name of the file with subsequent files along with its file size this should give me the result I'm looking for. Also, some of the duplicate files appear like abc-1.pdf or abc-2.pdf where these dash integers ("-1") is appended before the prefix so not to overwrite a file of the same name when I first downloaded them.
Finally, I'd like to make a copy of these files so that all are unique in a new directory. I plan on making a backup of these documents.
As an aside, I've already made the search and selected what I consider to be unique files by using simple mouse clicks while holding the command key. It's a painful thing to do when you have hundreds of these files. Even worse, I found out you can't copy files from a Spotlight search result - it gives you a system beep error.
Thanks to all who spend the time reading this lengthy thread. I appreciate your time and energy
Cheers,
Alex

Answer 1

Yes, you're right @Camelot. I had anticipated comparing file sizes along with the file name to check for duplicates. My file count that I want to sift through is in the hundreds and not thousands so I think this is sufficient for my purposes.
I've heard that calling a bash script from applescript to check for file details can be slow and was curious to know if you can run a regex comparison of the file name from applescript and also check the file size within applescript as well. Again, I guess since I have only a few hundred files to compare with, this slow down may be negligible and not worth the hassle of maybe doing it all within applescript.
What I have so far looks like:
(* Get array of paths to selected folders in following try statement *)
set pathsList to {}
try
set pathsList to ¬
choose folder with prompt ¬
"Select as many folders as you like:" with multiple selections allowed
on error eStr number eNum partial result rList from badObj to expectedType
do shell script "echo " & eStr
end try
(* The above method uses the colon (:) as a delimiter for subsequent folders. I'd like to get paths like /Users/alex/fileA:/Users/alex/fileB and so on... *)
(* Failing the above, I don't mind removing the "with multiple selections allowed" portion to get one path from the user instead. *)
(* Next I want to perform a spotlight search for files of pdf type within each path *)
set resultsList to {}
repeat with currentPath in pathsList
(* do Spotlight Search here *)
(* How do I retain the list of results in resultsList? *)
end repeat
set listOfNames to {}
set uniqueFilesList to {}
tell application "Finder"
repeat with currentFile in resultsList
set currentFileName to (the name of currentFile)
(* And do the same for the file size: *)
set currentFileSize to (the size of currentFile)
(* Make certain that the currentFile is an original and store in uniqueFilesList if so *)
set flag to 0
repeat with uniqueFile in uniqueFilesList
set uniqueFileName to (the name of uniqueFile)
set uniqueFileSize to (the size of uniqueFile)
if uniqueFileName contains currentFileName then
set flag to 1
if uniqueFileSize is not equal to currentFileSize then
set flag to 0
end if
end if
if flag = 1 then
break
end if
end repeat
if flag = 0 then (* add to final list *)
copy currentFolderName to the end of listOfNames
end if
set lastFolderName to currentFolderName
end repeat
end tell
Any fixes you may think of for this piece of code would be appreciated.
Regards,
Alex