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. P
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 as
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.