[geeks] listing identical files

[velociraptor]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:56:15 -0500 (EST), Kevin <kevin at mpcf.com> wrote:
> Anyone know of a way of listing all the identical files in a
> directory?
> 
> I have a directory containing several large files, many of which
> are just duplicates with differing names.  I would like to find a
> way to list all the identical files to help rescue some drive
> space.
> 
> There is probably a simplistic way to do this, but it escapes me,
> as i don't have much experience with any type of shell scripting.

I was thinking about this myself, as my backup "system" (hardly
applicable) has been duplicating files onto different hard drives, and
now I have more than just two copies over time.

The only way I can think to do it is by using some kind of
checksumming (e.g. md5), but I'm not sure if checksumming takes into
account the names of the files as I've only used it on identically
named files.  The downside is that it would be very disk and time
intensive.

Anyone else with any more useful ideas?

=Nadine=