100 unnamed files, which are then named, 1 is missing from the newly named files, how to find missing file in the original unnamed files

Question

unnamed files:  100

 

renamed files of the unnamed files: 99

 

missing named file: 1

Answer 1

Technically, there are no unnamed files on a computer.  This is because each file has an entry in a directory (folder) to locate the contents.

 

If File Names cannot be checked, then file contents are the only thing that makes those files unique.  As a shortcut, a hash may be computed to uniquely identify a file since it is improbable that two files have the same hash value (unless they have identical contents).

 

That means that each of the 100 unnamed files may be compared (or their hashes may be compared) to the renamed files and a record kept of the matches that are found.  When no match (either of file contents or of hash), you have found the unnamed file that is not included in the renamed list.  {Special note: it may be prudent to verify that only one such file is found.]

 

While such comprehensive algorithms may seem complicated to humans, they generally require very few minutes for a computer to execute.