I tried searching this on the web and see it different all over. My source folder is on the server I'm running rsync from. The folder is /data/pictures which has many subfolders. On my 1.2.3.4 server, I want to recreate pictures and all its subfolders inside of 1.2.3.4's /backups/pics-backup folder. When do I need to put a slash at the end of the folder paths and when don't I?

I think what I want to do is below, but searching on the web for when to put the trailing slash on the path has confused me as to what is right.


rsync -r -a -z -p -e ssh /data/pictures user@1.2.3.4:/backups/pics-backup/

I think the rsync man page said it best and helped me understand it:

A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating an additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a trailing / on a source as meaning “copy the contents of this directory”.
So, the example that they give can be explained in this way:

rsync -av /src/foo /dest
Copy the directory by name and it's contents into /dest, creating the folder foo and what it contains in /dest.
rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
Copy the contents of the directory into the folder /dest/foo. You are not necessarily copying the actual folder foo. The destination folder can be named anything and what was contained in foo will be copied to it.

If you do not want an additional directory depth in your backup (/backups/pics-backup/pictures) you would do:
rsync -r -a -z -p -e ssh /data/pictures/ user@1.2.3.4:/backups/pics-backup
If you did want that extra pictures folder inside pics-backup, you would do:
rsync -r -a -z -p -e ssh /data/pictures user@1.2.3.4:/backups/pics-backup/

Hope that explains it a bit more.

transfers only the _contents_ of '/source/folder/'

transfers the complete '/source/folder/' (recreates 'folder' with contents)

Yeah, I do want the extra pictures folder, just in case I'd ever have to copy it back, I can just move that pictures folder in its entirety. Thanks guys!