Applications can create a lot of temporary files sometimes, and these files aren’t always cleaned up automatically. An example of this is when you run Python applications. Particularly if you’re a Python developer, your source code directories stack up with a .pyc version of each file, which is the cached compiled copy of the script.

Over time, a filesystem accumulates a lot of useless items. FSlint is a nifty little tool that helps you clean your filesystem by pointing out junk in the form of empty directories, corrupt symlinks, files with bad names, duplicate and temp files, and more.

How do I find duplicate files in a given set of directories and delete them using a shell script or a command line options? How do I get rid of double duplicates files stored in ~/foo and /u2/foo directory?

With diff-ext, GNOME users can compare and merge files from within Nautilus. If, instead, you use KDE 3, try out kdiff-ext from the same site, which works with Konqueror. Each utility handles paths to files and directories and invokes an external diff tool to perform the grunt work.

fdupes is a simple Command Line utility to find and list duplicate files in the specified directories. fdupes can also delete the found duplicate files if instructed. fdupes can follow Symlinks and can be instructed to ignore hardlinks. fdupes can also show the size of the duplicate files. fdupes is a simple and very efficient tool, easy to use.

Certain situations require you to quickly confirm which files between two directories are different, and while your particular requirements may suggest writing a script for this task, I want to make sure you're familiar with the basics first - majority of directory comparisons can be done using diff command (yes, that's right - the same one used for comparing files).

A file archiver is computer software which brings together a group of files into a single archive file. An archive file is therefore a collection of files and directories that are stored in one file. There are many advantages of storing multiple files this way. For example, an archive is a great way to store backup data, transfer files to another directory, or to a different computer.

Unix systems provide a number of commands to manage files and directories. Their strong point is the ability to use them in a rather simple manner against a group of files/directories meeting certain conditions. For example all the files satisfying specific criteria can be deleted or have their names changed en masse.

If you want to convert .chm file to .pdf file you need to install chm2pdf application.This is A Python script that converts CHM files into PDF files. The package supports batch conversion, command line, PDF security options, password protection and compression modes. The program has Explorer-like interface.