Editing Sync Remote Directories (section)

== Previewing files that would be transferred ==

rsync's `-i` or `--itemize-changes` parameter will list the files that are different between the two locations. 

Use `egrep` to filter out the files that differ in file size only:

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">
$ rsync -ain [source] [dest] --exclude [excluded_path] | egrep "^>f[\+\.][\+s]"
# or, to include files that will be deleted
$ egrep "^[<>\*](?:f\.s|f\+\+|\delet)"
</syntaxhighlight>

[https://color-of-code.de/misc/rsync-flags This page] explains the output of the itemize changes flag.

[https://stackoverflow.com/a/12037164 This StackOverflow answer] has a concise description of the relevant parts of the flags.

'''>f.st......'''
<syntaxhighlight lang="text">
> - the item is received
f - it is a regular file
s - the file size is different
t - the time stamp is different
</syntaxhighlight>

'''.d..t......'''
<syntaxhighlight lang="text">
. - the item is not being updated (though it might have attributes 
    that are being modified)
d - it is a directory
t - the time stamp is different
</syntaxhighlight>

'''>f+++++++++'''
<syntaxhighlight lang="text">
> - the item is received
f - a regular file
+++++++++ - this is a newly created item
</syntaxhighlight>