Are you tired of manually merging files and directories that have identical content? Look no further than merge_ln! This new script allows you to merge two files or two directories by creating hard links to identical files.

Using the cmp and ln commands, merge_ln tests if two files are the same and merges them as hard links if they are. The script can take either two file names or two directory names as arguments, and will merge the files in the directories iteratively.

Not only does this save disk space, but it also ensures that changes to one file will affect the other file, since they are essentially the same file.

Github Repo URL

Usage

The merge_ln.sh script is used to test if two files are the same and merge them as hard links if they are. The script can take either two file names or two directory names as arguments, and will merge the files in the directories iteratively.

To use the script, run:

merge_ln file1 file2

or

merge_ln dir1 dir2

Replace file1, file2, dir1, and dir2 with the names of the files and directories you want to merge.

Installation

To install or upgrade the script, simply run:

sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/merge_ln https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tanganke/merge_ln/main/merge_ln.sh && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/merge_ln

For those in Mainland China, use the following command instead:

sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/merge_ln https://gitee.com/tanganke/merge_ln/raw/main/merge_ln.sh && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/merge_ln

Description

The merge_ln.sh script defines two functions: merge_files and merge_directories.

The merge_files function takes two file names as arguments and uses the cmp and ln commands to merge the files if they are the same. The merge_directories function takes two directory names as arguments and iteratively merges the files in the directories using the merge_files function.

The script then checks if the arguments are files or directories, and calls the appropriate function. If the arguments are not files or directories, the script prints a usage message.

The script uses hard links to merge the files, which means that the files will share the same inode and data blocks on the file system. This can save disk space and improve performance, since the files will not be duplicated. However, it also means that changes to one file will affect the other file, since they are essentially the same file.

Note that the script does not handle symbolic links or other types of files. It also does not handle cases where the same file name appears in both directories but the files are different.