rsync's trailing slash behavior is nonstandard for unix, and it
conflicts with existing unix behavior regarding symlinks to
directories.  (try running commands on a symlink to a directory with
and without a slash.)

yet the semantics are powerful and necessary.

therefore i propose an option, -/ or --as-if-trailing-slashes, to
pretend that the source arguments end in "/".

without this option, even experienced users might forget to add
slashes, especially when they use shell wrappers.  shell wrappers to
rsync are a good thing and should be encouraged rather than
discouraged.  this is best done by making creating desired semantics
simple.

just a wishlist.

thanks.

I second this wish.  In a wrapper, you may want the "clone this object
to this name" behavior without knowing whether the source object is a
file or directory.  There is no way to do this.  If you append the
trailing slash and the object is a file, rsync will complain that the
object is not a directory.

Andrew