4

I'm trying to simply sync a folder using rsync over my local network from my computer in front of me to the destination computer.

#!/bin/bash

echo "This script will sync from my Macbook Dropbox/scripts/ folder to [email protected] @ Norms house"

OPTIONS="--recursive --ignore-existing --progress"
SRC_DIR="~/Dropbox/scripts/"
DST_DIR="[email protected]:~/scripts/"
rsync "$OPTIONS" "$SRC_DIR" "$DST_DIR"

To give myself write privileges

chmod +x nameofscript.sh

When I run it, it outputs:

rsync: --recursive --ignore-existing --progress: unknown option

How do I properly store these options and run it as a script?

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    Please don’t add your solution to your question; if you feel the accepted answer isn’t complete enough, you can suggest an edit to that, or add your own separate answer. Commented Mar 22, 2018 at 22:16

1 Answer 1

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6

By quoting "$OPTIONS", the shell is passing it to rsync as a single string, so rsync is trying to find a single option named "--recursive --ignore-existing --progress", which obviously doesn't exist, since these are three separate options.

This should fix it for you:

rsync $OPTIONS "$SRC_DIR" "$DST_DIR"

A better option might be to use a bash array to store your options.

OPTIONS=(
    --recursive
    --ignore-existing
    --progress
)
# ...
rsync "${OPTIONS[@]}" "$SRC_DIR" "$DST_DIR"

The advantage of using an array is that then you are able to introduce items that include spaces, if any are necessary.

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  • The bash array works great to store the options, I've edited my original with the correct script. Thank you. Commented Mar 22, 2018 at 21:55
  • Awesome @Kaiya, I'm glad this worked for you! Commented Mar 22, 2018 at 22:06
  • 1
    The array approach also works nicely with trailing comments, i.e. --flag # Added because…. Commented Aug 19, 2023 at 13:11

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