DITTO(1) BSD 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 con-
tent) or PKZip (for Windows compatibility). src_archive (and dst_archive) can be the single character '-', causing ditto to read (write) ar-
chive 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 . Similarly, ditto
will preserve extended attributes and Access Control Lists (ACLs) unless --noextattr or --noacl is passed. DITTONORSRC can be set in the
environment as an alias to --norsrc --noextattr --noacl on the command line.
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 auto-
matically 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 repre-
sents 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. Diag-
nostic 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 meta-
data.
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