All the files and directories I want to talk about are on the same machine (a
Mac). I have a directory that I will call SOURCE. This contains a a number of
files, some of which are directories containing further files. I want to copy
these files to another directory, which I will call TARGET.
You should be fine as long as you don't add --delete.
I would start with rsync -vai --dry-run SOURCE/ TARGET/
Add whatever the OSX specific option is (I think -E)
Yes, --dry-run shows you what it would have done without --dry-run and
yes, if you can't read all the files then you need to run it
I'm probably missing something, but it looks like your first requirement
rules out using --delete,
but your third requirement seems to imply the need for it because you
want the source and target to be identical - and it won't be if there
are any files on the target which are not on the source.
