Terminal command that is the same as copy paste in Finder? I'm curious. As far as cp and rsync I see all these different options. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you copy + paste in Finder, lets say from one hard drive to another, it should preserve:


All file attributes (access time, modified time etc.)
All Symbolic Links
Recurse through the directory structure
(Can't think of anything else to preserve)?


So in the end, when you copy paste in Finder, everything will be an exact copy, just located in a different parent directory.

What I'm looking for is a command that mimics exactly what Finder does when you copy + paste. That will answer this question...

If it turns out Finder doesn't do what I think it does please explain, and show the command line equivalents for what Finder actually does... it must be calling a command when you use the GUI - right?
If you want to preserve file attributes, symbolic links, and recursive structure, rsync should suffice:

rsync -a ~/somefolder /Volumes/SomeUSB/


The -a (archive) flag is a shortcut for the following rsync options:


  --recursive recurse into directories
  --links copy symlinks as symlinks
  --perms preserve permissions
  --times preserve times
  --group sets the group of the destination file to be the same as the source file
  --owner sets the owner of the destination file to be the same as the source file (if you're copying to a remote system, the remote SSH user will need to have superuser status for this)
  --devices rsync will transfer character and block device files to the remote system.