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File Cleaning and Organizing Tool

Features

• Empty Files: Detects and removes files with zero size.
• Temporary Files: Identifies and deletes files with user-defined temporary extensions.
• Duplicates: Finds and removes duplicate files based on content (MD5 hash), keeping the oldest version.
• Same Name Files: Locates files with identical names across directories, keeping the newest and offering to delete older versions.
• File Attributes: Checks and corrects file permissions to a specified mode.
• Rename Files: Renames files with problematic characters, replacing them with a substitute character.

Usage

Run the tool using this command:

python clean_files.py [mode] directory1 [directory2 ...]

• mode (optional): Specifies the operation to perform. If omitted, all operations run by default. Options:
  • empty: Remove empty files.
  • temp: Remove temporary files.
  • dups: Remove duplicate files.
  • same: Remove older files with the same name.
  • attrib: Correct file permissions.
  • rename: Rename files with problematic characters.
  • all: Execute all operations (default if no mode is specified).
• directory1 [directory2 ...]: One or more directories to process.

Examples

1. Remove empty files from a directory:

   python clean_files.py empty mydir

2. Run all operations on multiple directories:

   python clean_files.py dir1 dir2

   or

   python clean_files.py all dir1 dir2

Configuration

The tool reads settings from a .clean_files file in the current working directory. If absent or invalid, it falls back to defaults. The file uses a key-value format (key=value).

Supported options:

• desired_mode: File permission mode in symbolic notation (e.g., rw-r--r-- for owner read/write, others read). Default: rw-r--r-- (octal 0644).
• problematic_chars: Characters flagged as problematic in filenames. Default: :".;*?$#'|\.
• substitute_char: Replacement character for problematic characters. Default: ..
• temp_extensions: Comma-separated list of temporary file extensions. Default: .tmp,~.

Example .clean_files:

desired_mode=rw-r--r--
problematic_chars=:".;*?$#'|\
substitute_char=_
temp_extensions=.tmp,.temp,~

Operations Details

• Empty Files: Finds files with zero bytes and prompts for deletion.
• Temporary Files: Targets files with extensions from temp_extensions and prompts for deletion.
• Duplicates: Uses MD5 hashing to detect identical content, sorts by modification time, keeps the oldest, and prompts to delete newer duplicates.
• Same Name Files: Groups files by name across directories, sorts by modification time, keeps the newest, and prompts to delete older ones.
• File Attributes: Compares permissions to desired_mode and prompts to adjust mismatches.
• Rename Files: Identifies filenames with problematic_chars and prompts to rename using substitute_char.

Interactive Prompts

For each file matching an operation’s criteria, the tool asks for input:

• y: Yes, perform the action (e.g., delete, rename).
• n: No, skip this file.
• a: Always perform the action for all similar files without further prompts.

Example: Choosing a when deleting empty files will remove all empty files automatically.

Testing the Tool

A helper script, create_test_structure.py, sets up a test environment:

python create_test_structure.py

This generates a test_dir containing:

• Empty file (empty.txt).
• Temporary file (temp_file.tmp).
• Duplicate files (duplicate.txt, duplicate_copy.txt).
• Same-name files (same.txt in subdirectories with varying times).
• Problematic filename (problematic:file?name.txt).
• File with odd permissions (bad_permissions.txt, mode 0777).

Test the tool with:

python clean_files.py test_dir

Dependencies

The tool uses only Python standard libraries (os, sys, hashlib, argparse), requiring no external packages.

Notes

• Recursive: Processes directories and subdirectories via os.walk.
• Time-Based: Uses modification times (st_mtime) to determine oldest/newest files.
• Limitations: Ignores symbolic links and special files (e.g., sockets).
• Permissions: Requires read/write access to files and directories to function properly.

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