finding renamed files

[Jim Ault]

Take a look at the filter command with wild cards instead of regEx
Very speedy, and easy to do progressive 'nibbles' + counting


On 2/3/07 10:46 AM, "David Glasgow" <david at dvglasgow.wanadoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I am looking for a quick and dirty method for walking a directory and
> finding files that have been renamed by the user.  I don't need to find
> them all, just as many as possible.  The folders are likely to
> originally contain matching stems and progressive numbers pjf017.jpg,
> pjf018 .jpg, pfj019 .jpg etc. etc, with the user renamed files standing
> out completely arbitrarily by not following the pattern .
> 
> At the moment I do this using the eyeball test, which is remarkably
> quick and efficient but very very very boring because there are often
> thousands of files to scan.  One approach I thought of is to
> progressively filter the folders' contents by nibbling a character off
> the end of the first filename.  If it is completely unique (and
> possibly therefore renamed), nothing will happen.  However if  9 other
> files disappear, it was a name representative of progressive pattern.
> Nibble another character, and so on until it is gone, and any filenames
> left over didn't fit the dominant pattern in the folder.  Yes?  No? .
> Any other suggestions?
>