Let's say you have /a, /a/b, /a/c, and /x. This:
rsync /a /x
will create directories /x/a, /x/a/b, and /x/a/c. On the other hand,
this:
rsync /a/ /x
will create directories /x/b and /x/c.
Well, yeh, of course it will. Any code that does tree walks is going to
behave the same way.
rsync /a /x
"in "/x", create "a" containing "/a" and everything under it"
Creates /x/a, /x/a/b, and /x/a/c.
rsync /a/. /x
"in "/x", create "." containing "/a/." and everything under it"
Creates /x/./b and /x/./c, which is /x/b and /x/c.
rsync /a/ /x
"in "/x", create "" containing "/a/" and everything under it"
Creates /x//b and /x//c, which is /x/b and /x/c. This works because
UNIX ignores superfluous path separators, so "//" becomes "/" and the
trailing "/" vanishes.
Presumably, this is to get around the problem where you want to copy
all
of the contents of a remote directory, but you can't use globbing,
because
that's expanded locally, by the shell.
It's not to "get around" anything. It's just doing *exactly* what you
told it to do.
rsync is worthy of hate, but not for this.
