The rsync utility is an amazing workhorse tool: it synchronises file system trees in a very efficient manner, only sending changes in data. Which is particularly useful across a network connection, as it can save dramatically on I/O bandwidth and speed up the whole process, often by several orders of magnitude when compared to a full copy.
Perhaps even more impressive, is that rsync knows how to send changes between binary files when some parts of the data have moved up or down in the file.
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