DITTO(1) General Commands Manual DITTO(1)
NAME
ditto – copy directory hierarchies, create and extract archives
SYNOPSIS
ditto [-v] [-V] [-X] [<options>] src ... dst_directory
ditto [-v] [-V] [<options>] src_file dst_file
ditto -c [-z | -j | -k] [-v] [-V] [-X] [<options>] src dst_archive
ditto -x [-z | -j | -k] [-v] [-V] [<options>] src_archive ... dst_directory
ditto -h | --help
DESCRIPTION
In its first form, ditto copies one or more source files or directories to
a destination directory. If the destination directory does not exist it
will be created before the first source is copied. If the destination
directory already exists then the source directories are merged with the
previous contents of the destination.
In its second form, ditto copies a file to the supplied dst_file pathname.
The next two forms reflect ditto's ability to create and extract archives.
These archives can be either CPIO format (preferred for unix content) or
PKZip (for Windows compatibility). src_archive (and dst_archive) can be
the single character '-', causing ditto to read (write) archive data from
stdin (or to stdout, respectively).
ditto follows symbolic links provided as arguments but does not follow any
links as it traverses the source or destination hierarchies. ditto
overwrites existing files, symbolic links, and devices in the destination
when these are copied from a source. The resulting files, links, and
devices will have the same mode, access time, modification time, owner, and
group as the source items from which they are copied. Pipes, sockets, and
files with names beginning with .nfs or .afpDeleted will be ignored. ditto
does not modify the mode, owner, group, extended attributes, or ACLs of
existing directories in the destination. Files and symbolic links cannot
overwrite directories or vice-versa.
ditto can be used to "thin" Universal Mach-O binaries during a copy. ditto
can also copy files selectively based on the contents of a BOM ("Bill of
Materials") file. ditto preserves file hard links (but not directory hard
links) present in the source directories and preserves setuid and setgid
modes when run as the superuser.
ditto will preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data information when
copying unless instructed otherwise using --norsrc . --norsrc will disable
copy of resource forks, extended attributes, Access Control Lists (ACLs),
as well as quarantine bits. DITTONORSRC can be set in the environment as
an alias to --norsrc --noextattr --noacl --noqtn on the command line.
However, each option can be individually turned on or off, see the OPTIONS
section for more details.
OPTIONS
-h Print full usage.
-v Print a line of output to stderr for each source directory
copied.
-V Print a line of output to stderr for every file, symbolic
link, and device copied.
-X When copying one or more source directories, do not descend
into directories that have a different device ID.
-c Create an archive at the destination path. The default
format is CPIO, unless -k is given. CPIO archives should be
stored in files with names ending in .cpio. Compressed CPIO
archives should be stored in files with names ending in
.cpgz.
-z Create compressed CPIO archives, using gzip(1) compression.
-j Create compressed CPIO archives, using bzip2(1) compression.
-x Extract the archives given as source arguments. The format is
assumed to be CPIO, unless -k is given. Compressed CPIO is
automatically handled.
-k Create or extract from a PKZip archive instead of the default
CPIO. PKZip archives should be stored in filenames ending in
.zip.
--keepParent When creating an archive, embed the parent directory name src
in dst_archive.
--arch arch Thin Universal binaries to the specified architecture. If
multiple --arch options are specified then the resulting
destination file will contain each of the specified
architectures (if they are present in the source file). arch
should be specified as "i386", "x86_64", etc.
--bom bom Copy only files, links, devices, and directories that are
present in the specified BOM.
--rsrc Preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data. ditto will store
this data in Carbon-compatible ._ AppleDouble files on
filesystems that do not natively support resource forks. As
of Mac OS X 10.4, --rsrc is default behavior.
--norsrc Do not preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data. If both
--norsrc and --rsrc are passed, whichever is passed last will
take precedence. Both options override DITTONORSRC. Unless
explicitly specified, --norsrc also implies --noextattr and
--noacl to match the behavior of Mac OS X 10.4.
--extattr Preserve extended attributes (requires --rsrc). As of Mac OS
X 10.5, --extattr is the default.
--noextattr Do not preserve extended attributes (requires --norsrc).
--qtn Preserve quarantine information. As of Mac OS X 10.5, --qtn
is the default.
--noqtn Do not preserve quarantine information.
--acl Preserve Access Control Lists (ACLs). As of Mac OS X 10.5,
--acl is the default.
--noacl Do not preserve ACLs.
--nocache Do not perform copies using the Mac OS X Unified Buffer
Cache. Files read and written will not be cached, although if
the file is already present in the cache, the cached
information will be used.
--hfsCompression
When copying files or extracting content from an archive, if
the destination is an HFS+ volume that supports compression,
all the content will be compressed if appropriate. This is
only supported on Mac OS X 10.6 or later, and is only
intended to be used in installation and backup scenarios that
involve system files. Since files using HFS+ compression are
not readable on versions of Mac OS X earlier than 10.6, this
flag should not be used when dealing with non-system files or
other user-generated content that will be used on a version
of Mac OS X earlier than 10.6.
--nohfsCompression
Do not compress files with HFS+ compression when copying or
extracting content from an archive unless the content is
already compressed with HFS+ compression. This flag is only
supported on Mac OS X 10.6 or later. --nohfsCompression is
the default.
--preserveHFSCompression
When copying files to an HFS+ volume that supports
compression, ditto will preserve the compression of any
source files that were using HFS+ compression. This flag is
only supported on Mac OS X 10.6 or later.
--preserveHFSCompression is the default.
--nopreserveHFSCompression
Do not preserve HFS+ compression when copying files that are
already compressed with HFS+ compression. This is only
supported on Mac OS X 10.6 or later.
--sequesterRsrc
When creating a PKZip archive, preserve resource forks and
HFS meta-data in the subdirectory __MACOSX. PKZip extraction
will automatically find these resources.
--zlibCompressionLevel num
Sets the compression level to use when creating a PKZip
archive. The compression level can be set from 0 to 9, where
0 represents no compression, and 9 represents optimal
(slowest) compression. By default, ditto will use the default
compression level as defined by zlib.
--password When extracting a password-encrypted ZIP archive, you must
specify --password to allow ditto to prompt for a password to
use to extract the contents of the file. If this option is
not provided, and a password-encrypted file is encountered,
ditto will emit an error message.
EXAMPLES
The command:
ditto src_directory dst_directory
copies the contents of src_directory into dst_directory, creating
dst_directory if it does not already exist.
The command:
ditto src_directory dir/dst_directory
copies the contents of src_directory into dir/dst_directory, creating dir
and dst_directory if they don't already exist.
The command:
ditto src-1 ... src-n dst_directory
copies the contents of all of the src directories into dst_directory,
creating dst_directory if it does not already exist.
The command:
ditto --arch ppc universal_file thin_file
copies the contents of universal_file into thin_file, thinning executable
code to ppc-only on the fly.
The command:
ditto -c --norsrc Scripts -|ssh rhost ditto -x --norsrc - ./Scripts
copies Scripts, skipping any resources or meta-data, to rhost.
The command:
pax -f archive.cpio
will list the files in the CPIO archive archive.cpio.
The command:
pax -zf archive.cpgz
will list the files in the compressed CPIO archive archive.cpgz.
The command:
ditto -c -k --sequesterRsrc --keepParent src_directory archive.zip
will create a PKZip archive similarly to the Finder's Compress
functionality.
The command:
unzip -l archive.zip
will list the files in the PKZip archive archive.zip.
ERRORS
ditto returns 0 if everything is copied, otherwise non-zero. ditto almost
never gives up, preferring to report errors along the way. Diagnostic
messages will be printed to standard error.
ENVIRONMENT
DITTOABORT If the environment variable DITTOABORT is set, ditto will call
abort(3) if it encounters a fatal error.
DITTONORSRC
If DITTONORSRC is set but --rsrc, --extattr, and --acl are not
specified, ditto will not preserve those additional types of
metadata.
BUGS
ditto doesn't copy directories into directories in the same way as cp(1).
In particular,
ditto foo bar
will copy the contents of foo into bar, whereas
cp -r foo bar
copies foo itself into bar. Though this is not a bug, some may consider
this bug-like behavior. --keepParent for non-archive copies will
eventually alleviate this problem.
SEE ALSO
bom(5), lsbom(8), mkbom(8), cpio(1), zip(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), tar(1).
Mac OS X December 19, 2008 Mac OS X