Accident caused by --remove-source-files

[huangyingw]

when I used --remove-source-files in following way:

rsync --remove-source-files source_dir/ target_dir/

there is a great danger:
if I Accidentally run it with source_dir === target_dir, or source_dir is just a symbol link to target_dir,
then both the source_dir and target_dir would be clean, empty, all the Contents under these dir would be gone.

Is there any pre-check for --remove-source-files, to prevent this case?

[WayneD]

Only in your own brain. When prepping an rsync, it's often good to use option -ai and --dry-run (-n) to see what's going to happen. If you pointed it at the same source/dest files, it would show that there was nothing to copy, which should be a red flag.