Ditto is slightly more advanced however may be advantageous to cp for many reasons, because it not only preserves attributes and permissions but additionally file resources and file and folder information, primarily insuring that the file andor folders are copied specifically.

Also, if the destination folder will exist, the copied contents are merged along with destination directory files folders.

Finally, ditto additionally follows symbolic links, making it significantly handy if youre a heavy user of the ln (The ln command is used to create either a hard link or a symbolic link between files andor directories) command.

If youre unsure concerning the source and destination contents, youll be able to always compare the 2 with the comm command or the diff command before continuing with the ditto command.

To achieve this comparison, well use the command line tool diff, itll simply compare the contents of any 2directories by using the next command.

If youd prefer to not produce a text file with the changes, simply leave off the output redirection of the command.

You may wish to pipe the output to one thing like more to make it easier to scan though.

Again, the merge behavior happens once the destination already exists, if the destination doesnt exist it will be created as specified, or it will be taken from source name.

Note -V is totally different than -v, which can solely show files as output, and not symbolic links.

Ditto For Mac