Hi -

When my ipod carked it a few weeks ago, I managed to save most of my music, but now I seem to have two nearly similar but not quite identical sets of music files. Can anyone tell me if there is an easy way to merge the two sets of files, without duplicating songs?

Probably a stupid question I know, but I'd appreciate anyone who could help. Ta so very much.

Can't you just drag all items from Folder 1, into all items in Folder 2?

That way, you have the original set (Folder 1, say), plus all the items that are unique in Folder 2, in Folder 1. You have merged the two.

If you need to find out what is missing from one or the other I suggest you use the diff Terminal command. sdiff is also handy (split).

Sorry I can't give any other ideas besides the Terminal solution/drag and drop, ignore existing duplicates (do not replace files, unless you want to do that).

P.S. Take the smaller set, merge it with the larger set (to make it even larger or the same size).

Huy: can't do that drag-all-items trick with OSX, because Finder doesn't have a merge function. If there is a folder of stuff in the destination with the same name, Finder will erase that folder and its contents, then copy the new version over.

Huy didn't say to drag folder 1 into the other folder, he said drag all items from folder 1. If it detects items of the same name inside the other folder it will alert you.

Yes, I know that ... but this will not solve the original poster's need to reliably merge the two folders' worth of files.

Say you have two folders, thus:

Folder A
> Subfolder 1
> > File A1
> > File A2

Folder B
> Subfolder 1
> > File B1
> > File B2

If I use Finder, and drag Subfolder 1 from Folder A and drop it into Folder B, I will get an alert about a folder of the same name. If I say 'Replace', this is how Folder B will look when it is finished:

Folder B
> Subfolder 1
> > File A1
> > File A2

File B1 and File B2 will be erased. Gone.

It is somewhat mindboggling that MacOS Finder has NEVER been able to merge directories. Windows can do it. Unix and all linuxes can do it. Even OSX's ancestor NeXTstep can do it. OSX's commandline shell can do it from the Terminal. Why can't the Finder?

Too bad.
Thanks everyone for your advice.
Guess I just do it the ol' fashioned way!

Cheers.