Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

English support for the software AllDup
Post Reply
JR147
Posts: 14
Joined: 24 May 2019, 06:58

Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by JR147 »

Since AllDup version 4.4.46, hard links among files in a group are created by selecting all of the files in a group, and the first file is then automatically used for the source to create the hard links.

When you have done a search for exact duplicates, this behavior is fine, as all of the files in the group are identical. However, after doing a search for files that are not exact duplicates (e.g. a similar images search), there could be several similar files in the group, but sometimes we may not want the first file in the group to be used as the source for the hard links.

Can this behavior be changed back to how it used to work before version 4.4.46, i.e., if we have selected all of the files in a group except one, then the non-selected file will be used as the source to create hard links for the other files in the group.
Administrator
Site Admin
Posts: 4046
Joined: 04 Oct 2004, 18:38
Location: Thailand
Contact:

Re: Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by Administrator »

Why do you want to create hard links of files that are not exact duplicates?
Can this behavior be changed back to how it used to work before version 4.4.46
No, that's not possible.
JR147
Posts: 14
Joined: 24 May 2019, 06:58

Re: Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by JR147 »

Administrator wrote: 24 Jun 2021, 09:24 Why do you want to create hard links of files that are not exact duplicates?
Because we could have a situation where all of the files in the group are all similar but not exact duplicates, and one of the files is superior in quality to the others. One example: several flatbed scans of the same page of a book or magazine. None of the scans would be exact duplicates since there would be slight variations in each of the manual scans, even though they are all scans of the same page. But one could be clearer quality than the others, or one could be in color while the others are grayscale, or the DPI/resolution could vary between the scans, etc.
In these cases, I would like to be able to choose which of these non-exact "duplicates" is the best quality among the ones in a group, and delete the others and have hard links created from them based on the best-quality source file I chose. And the best quality file may not be the one that appears at the top of the group.

One alternative do do what I want would be if I could "move" the best quality file to the top of the group so that it is the one that is used as the source file when creating hard links, but I don't see a way to do that in AllDup v4.4.54.
Administrator
Site Admin
Posts: 4046
Joined: 04 Oct 2004, 18:38
Location: Thailand
Contact:

Re: Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by Administrator »

We added a new file context menu command:

Screenshot - 25.06.2021 , 07_42_37.png

Result:

Screenshot - 25.06.2021 , 07_42_48.png
Screenshot - 25.06.2021 , 07_42_48.png (10.33 KiB) Viewed 9300 times
JR147
Posts: 14
Joined: 24 May 2019, 06:58

Re: Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by JR147 »

Thanks!

Also: In the Process selected files window, if you have all files selected in a group, and "Create hard links" is selected, it would be useful if the "Don't process any groups with all files selected" option could be ignored in this case, without having to manually de-select it every time you want to create hard links.
Administrator
Site Admin
Posts: 4046
Joined: 04 Oct 2004, 18:38
Location: Thailand
Contact:

Re: Suggestion: Create hard links based on non-selected file in group

Post by Administrator »

That makes sense. Will be changed with the next update.
Post Reply