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hardlink(1)                 General Commands Manual                hardlink(1)
NAME
       hardlink - Consolidate duplicate files via hardlinks
SYNOPSIS
       hardlink [-c] [-n] [-v] [-vv] [-x pattern] [-h] directory1 [ directory2
       ... ]
DESCRIPTION
       This manual page  documents  hardlink,  a  program  which  consolidates
       duplicate files in one or more directories using hardlinks.
       hardlink  traverses  one  or  more  directories searching for duplicate
       files.  When it finds duplicate files, it uses one of them as the  mas-
       ter.   It  then  removes all other duplicates and places a hardlink for
       each one pointing to the master file.  This allows for conservation  of
       disk  space  where  multiple directories on a single filesystem contain
       many duplicate files.
       Since hard links can only span a single filesystem,  hardlink  is  only
       useful when all directories specified are on the same filesystem.
OPTIONS
       -c        Compare  only  the contents of the files being considered for
                 consolidation.  Disregards permission,  ownership  and  other
                 differences.
       -f        Force hardlinking across file systems.
       -n        Do  not  perform  the consolidation; only print what would be
                 changed.
       -v        Print summary after hardlinking.
       -vv       Print every hardlinked file and bytes saved. Also print  sum-
                 mary after hardlinking.
       -x pattern
                 Exclude files and directories matching pattern from hardlink-
                 ing.
       -h        Show help.
       The optional pattern for excluding files  and  directories  must  be  a
       PCRE2  compatible  regular expression. Only the basename of the file or
       directory is checked, not its path. Excluded directories' contents will
       not be examined.
AUTHOR
       hardlink was written by Jakub Jelinek <jakub AT redhat.com>.
       Man page written by Brian Long.
       Man page updated by Jindrich Novy <jnovy AT redhat.com>
BUGS
       hardlink  assumes  that  its  target directory trees do not change from
       under it.  If a directory tree does change, this may result in hardlink
       accessing  files  and/or  directories outside of the intended directory
       tree.  Thus, you must avoid running hardlink  on  potentially  changing
       directory  trees,  and  especially  on directory trees under control of
       another user.
       Historically  hardlink  silently  excluded  any  names  beginning  with
       ".in.",  as  well as any names beginning with "." followed by exactly 6
       other characters. That prior behavior can be achieved by specifying
       -x '^(\.in\.|\.[^.]{6}$)'
                                                                   hardlink(1)