comparing folder contents

[27 houdini's]

I'm working with a shipload of (photoshop) documents.
I have to do a lot of batch changes, eg saving files in jpg and tiff formats. Sometimes i have different amount of file numbers, e g 999 jpg files and 1000 tiff files, though they are copies from the same source folder (containing 1001 files).
So photshop must have skipped one file for some reason.

Q: how can i compare folders (in this case the source folder and and the jpg folder) so i can find out which documents are missing? Does os x have a tool for that?

 

[Racer D]

here's a non-rocket science way to do it

open both folders in finder in seperate windows

set both views to list and arrange by name

now press page down once in both windows and check if they're still the same (check the botoom most file or sth) and keep doing this until you see something has changed

 

[27 houdini's]

yup, that works, but i'm talking loadsa files, not juss 20. i'm talking numbered too, files e g CAS_1305_1.tiff up to cas_5403_1.tif etc
your suggestion works but makes my head spin too, or loose concentration when some one enters the room to sparpen his pencil

i's hoping for something automated...

 

[Racer D]

hmm, tried searching some unix sites? I bet there's gotta be a shell script to do it somewhere out there

 

[slur]

Well, I suppose you can use the diff command creatively:

ls -1 /first/path >/tmp/d1
ls -1 /second/path >/tmp/d2
diff /tmp/d1 /tmp/d2

To embed into a shell script just change /first/path to "$1" and /second/path to "$2" and the script will do the substitutions for you.

 

[Arden]

Can you print Finder windows in OS X yet, or do you use OS X at all? In any case, if you can, try the following:

Print each Finder window you're comparing to a PDF or Postscript file, then open them in Photoshop. Select all the black in one (it should be the text only) and copy it to the other document, lining up the text so you have the same file names overlapping. Then scroll through the document until you see something that looks wrong, and there's your problem.

 

[craymond]

I have had the same problem and never found a great solution. I believe I have come close with the following.
-using bbedit, drag and drop the first directory onto an empty document and let it write out the contents
-do the same with directory number 2
- use File Merge to find the difference.

I never had enough time to figure out File Merge and always end up doing the compare manually. It's seems like this is what the app should be used for.

I hope you can figure it out.