Duplicate Hunt Filters

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ZsDuplicateHunter offers several options for filtering files and folders. Using the filtering options gives you control over exactly which files are searched and can speed up the duplicate hunt (because fewer files need to be grouped). Filters are set on the Duplicate Hunter tab in the options dialog. Note: some filters are available only in the Professional version of zsDuplicateHunter.

 

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Filtering by Filename

ZsDuplicateHunter allows you to filter files and/or folders based on pattern matches. Unless you use regular expression matching the rules used to determine if a file or folder passes a filter are:

· a * matches any sequence of characters
· a ? matches any single character

If you use regular expressions, the filter will use regular expressions to determine if the file passes the filter. For more information on regular expressions, see the understanding regular expressions section . Filtering using Regular Expressions is only available in the Professional version.

 

To further refine the filter, you can set to either include or exclude matches. The "e;include"e; setting is useful if you have a small set of files you want to search without worrying about the remainder of the files. You can also set it to filter either by name or by path. Filtering by full path requires you to enter the full path of the files or folders you would like filtered. Filtering by name will only match the display name of the file or folder including the extension if any.

Examples

For example, if you are searching for duplicate music files, you may want to include only files with extensions of mp3 using a filter specified as *.mp3. The comparison would then ignore any files that are not mp3 files.

 

On the other hand if you have already checked your music and wanted to exclude it, you could set an exclude filter for *.mp3;*.wma. The comparison would then ignore only files with the extensions of mp3 and wma, and would compare other documents types.

Ignoring Files based on File Size

ZsDuplicateHunter allows you to filter files based on the size of the file. To filter by size, first select the criteria you would like zsDuplicateHunter to apply when doing filtering (less than, between, greater than, etc.). Then select the size to filter based on. When setting the size you can specify the size in bytes, kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), or gigabytes (GB).

 

Filtering by size can be very useful if you want to exclude large files which require a long time to calculate their checksums, or if you only want to only search large files that take up a large amount of space. You can also use filtering by size to find all of the empty files on your computer. Just set the filter to include files less than or equal to 0 bytes.

Ignoring Files based on File Time

ZsDuplicateHunter allows you to filter files based on the time the file was last modified. To filter by time, first select the criteria you would like zsDuplicateHunter to apply when doing filtering (earlier than, between, later than, etc.). Then select the time to filter based on.

 

Filtering by time can be very useful if you want to remove duplicate files that have not been used for a set time period, or if you have already removed the majority of your duplicates and only want to look for duplicates in files that have been modified recently.

Ignoring Files based on Attributes

ZsDuplicateHunter also allows you to filter files based on some attributes of the files. You can ignore hidden files on all operating systems. On the Windows operating systems you can also ignore system files and shortcuts. On Mac OS X you can also ignore aliases. Ignoring shortcuts and aliases is only available in the Professional Version.

 

In most cases you will want to leave these options on to prevent deletion of files that are important to your operating system.