1FDUPES-HELP(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual FDUPES-HELP(7)
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6 fdupes-help - fdupes interactive mode reference
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10 When run interactively (as fdupes --delete), fdupes will show a list of
11 duplicates and prompt the user for further action.
12 The user can tell fdupes which files to keep or delete by tagging them
14 accordingly. Once tagged, the user can instruct fdupes to delete any
15 files that have been tagged for deletion. This can be done incremen‐
16 tally, if desired, successively tagging and deleting a limited number
17 of files at a time until no more duplicates remain to be processed.
18 There are several ways to tag files in fdupes: individually using the
20 cursor, by providing a list of files to keep, or by selecting files
21 that match particular search criteria and tagging those as desired.
22 Each of these approaches is discussed in detail in the sections below.
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26 The list of duplicates can be scrolled as follows:
27 PAGE DOWN
29 Scroll down to the next page.
30 PAGE UP
33 Scroll up to preceding page.
34 SHIFT + DOWN
37 Scroll down by one line. Not supported on some terminals.
38 SHIFT + UP
41 Scroll up by one line. Not supported on some terminals.
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45 The cursor tells fdupes which file and/or set of duplicates to act on,
46 as described in the next section. The cursor's position can be changed
47 as follows:
48 DOWN Advance cursor to the next file on the list.
51 UP Move cursor back to the previous file.
54 TAB Advance cursor to the next set of duplicates.
57 BACKSPACE
60 Move cursor back to the previous set.
61 F3 Advance cursor to the next selected set, if any.
64 F2 Move cursor back to the previous selected set, if any.
67 It is also possible to jump directly to a particular set:
70 'goto <index>'
73 Move cursor to the top of the set indicated by index.
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77 Individual files can be tagged using the keys below. These keys all act
78 on the current file, as identified by the cursor.
79 SHIFT + RIGHT
82 Tag current file for keeping.
83 SHIFT + LEFT
86 Tag current file for deletion.
87 '?' Remove tag from current file.
90 Entire sets of files can be tagged by providing a list of indices in a
93 comma-separated list. Files in the current set whose indices appear on
94 the list will be tagged for keeping, while any other files in that set
95 will be tagged for deletion. As with individual files, the current set
96 is identified by the cursor.
97 As an example, given the following list of duplicates:
100 Set 1 of 5:
102 1 [ ] path/to/file_a
104 2 [ ] path/to/file_b
105 3 [ ] path/to/file_c
106 Typing '1, 3' at the prompt and pressing ENTER will tell fdupes to tag
109 file_a and file_c for keeping, and file_b for deletion. The special
110 command 'all' will tag all files for keeping.
111 There is one more command to deal with files in the current set:
114 'rg' Remove tags from all files in current set.
116
119 Another way to tag files is to first select them according to particu‐
120 lar search criteria and then tell fdupes what to do with them. The fol‐
121 lowing commands can be used to select files for tagging:
122 'sel <text>'
125 Select any files whose paths contain the given text.
126 'selb <text>'
129 Select any files whose paths begin with the given text.
130 'sele <text>'
133 Select any files whose paths end with the given text.
134 'selm <text>'
137 Select any file whose path matches the given text exactly.
138 'selr <expression>'
141 Select any files whose paths match the given regular expression
142 (see below).
143 'dsel <text>'
146 Deselect any files whose paths contain the given text.
147 'dselb <text>'
150 Deselect any files whose paths begin with the given text.
151 'dsele <text>'
154 Deselect any files whose paths end with the given text.
155 'dselm <text>'
158 Deselect any file whose path matches the given text exactly.
159 'dselr <expression>'
162 Deselect any files whose paths match the given regular expres‐
163 sion (see below).
164 'csel' Clear all selections.
167 'isel' Invert selections within selected sets. For example, if files 1
170 and 4 in a set of 5 are selected, isel will deselect files 1 and
171 4, and select files 2, 3, and 5. Immediately repeating the same
172 command will deselect files 2, 3, and 5, and select files 1 and
173 4, restoring selections to their previous state.
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177 Once some files have been selected using the commands described above,
178 the following commands can be used to tag selected files as desired:
179 'ks' Tag selected files for keeping.
181 'ds' Tag selected files for deletion.
184 'rs' Remove all tags from selected files.
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190 Once tagged for deletion, files can be deleted by pressing DELETE or
191 using the 'prune' command. Fdupes will delete any files that are tagged
192 for deletion and delist any sets whose remaining files have been tagged
193 for keeping. For safety, fdupes will refuse to act on sets for which
194 all files have been tagged for deletion. To handle these cases, tag at
195 least one file for keeping and run the delete command again.
196
199 'exit', 'quit'
200 Exit the program.
201 'help' Display this help text.
204
207 A regular expression is a sequence of characters defining a search pat‐
208 tern against which other character sequences can be compared. Strings
209 of characters that follow the pattern defined by an expression are said
210 to match the expression, whereas strings that break the pattern do not.
211 The syntax for regular expressions used by fdupes is known as the Perl
213 Compatible Regular Expression syntax. A detailed description of regular
214 expression syntax is beyond the scope of this document. For detailed
215 information the user is encouraged to consult the PCRE2 documentation:
216 https://www.pcre.org/current/doc/html/pcre2syntax.html
218 Briefly, here are some examples of regular expressions:
221 abc123 Will match any string containing the sequence abc123, such as
224 abc123, abc123x, xabc123, and xabc123x.
225 ^abc123
228 Will match any string beginning with abc123, such as abc123 and
229 abc123x, but not xabc123 or xabc123x. The character '^' has
230 special meaning, telling the program to match only those strings
231 that begin with the pattern that follows.
232 abc123$
235 Will match any string that ends with abc123, such as abc123 and
236 xabc123, but not abc123x or xabc123x. The character '$' has
237 special meaning, telling the program to match only those strings
238 that end with the preceding pattern.
239 ^abc123$
242 Will match the string abc123 and no other.
243 ab.123 Will match any string containing abc123 as in the first example,
246 but it will also match strings containing abz123, ab0123,
247 ab_123, etc. The character '.' has special meaning, acting as a
248 placeholder that will match any character in that position.
249 ^a.*3$ Will match any string beginning with the letter a and ending
252 with the number 3, such as abc123, a3, and a0b1c2d3. Here the
253 character '*' tells the program to accept any number of appear‐
254 ances (including none) for the preceding item (here, any charac‐
255 ter matching the placeholder character '.'). The characters '^'
256 and '$' have the same meaning as in previous examples.
257 abc\d+ Will match any string containing the characters abc followed
260 immediately by one or more decimal digits, such as abc123 and
261 abc3210, but not abcd123 or abc 123 (note the space). Here \d is
262 a placeholder for any decimal digit, while the character '+'
263 tells the program to match one or more appearances of the pre‐
264 ceding character or placeholder (here, \d).
265 \w+\d+ Will match any string containing one or more "word" characters
268 followed immediately by one or more decimal digits, such as
269 abc123 and abcd3210, but not abc 123 (note the space). Here \w
270 is a placeholder for a "word" character, and \d and '+' have the
271 same meaning as in the preceding example.
272 This is just scratching the surface of what can be done with regular
275 expressions. Consult the PCRE2 documentation for a complete reference.
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279 The fdupes man page, fdupes(1).
280 FDUPES-HELP(7)