I am not a normal member of this site. I was just looking through Google to find the answer to another problem and came across you guys who had a question that needed answering. I have just joined for the purpose of answering this one question for you guys, and will probably not come back.

Anyway:
First of all, let me clear up the "--rsrcFork" confusion. "--rsrcFork" IS "--rsrc". They do the exact same thing. They are "aliases" of each other.

As for "-rsrc" vs "--rsrc" (with the 2 dashes), "--rsrc" is considered more proper. I have not tested if 1 dash will work, but I KNOW 2 dashes will. And 2 dashes is considered to be the standard for command line options in *NIX and its variants.

As for what ditto does, let me try to keep it simple:
It copies files+folders from one place to another.
The difference between "ditto" and "cp" is that ditto will preserve a part of a file called the "resource fork". This is very important for some files, so it is usually better to use ditto when copying anything important.
Also, ditto can be used to make and extract to/from archives using the -c (possibly together with -z for better compression) and -x options. This is what I usually use when backing up data.

As for what 72dpi said about repairing permissions, you were wrong (no offense). This will not fix any permissions in your copies. It is almost an ucban myth that repairing permissions really solves much of anything. The only time it is sometimes useful is if you were tinkering around by CHANGING system files. Even then, it is more likely to hurt than to help. (although it might be a godd idea to repair permissions after doing a major OS upgrade -- like from Panter to Tiger).

Also, just a little reccomendation for anyone who is interested in learning more about the BASH shell (also known as Terminal):
"man" is your friend. Just about every command available has a "man" page. You can access it by tying in:
man "Command_Name"
For example, to see the man page for ditto, type in:
man ditto
You can learn a lot from man pages, and they are often the most reliable place to look for documentation. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of things in these man pages may be confusing for an inexperienced user.
If you look in the man page for ditto, you will notice that "--rsrcFork" is not listed (Unless you are running 10.0 or 10.1). man pages almost always include all of the options for a command (at least, they are supposed to). "--rsrcFork" is not listed because it is no longer an official option.

By the way, some "elitist" UNIX gurus will often respond to most questions with "RTFM", which means "Read the F---ING man". This is often sound advice, although I prefer not to say it that way.

If anyone has any further questions, feel free to e-mail me.


~Matt