@Bob,

You can limit comparison to file names and sizes by combining find and diff:

find dir1 -type f -exec stat --format='%s %n' {} + | sort > dir1_files.txt
find dir2 -type f -exec stat --format='%s %n' {} + | sort > dir2_files.txt
diff -q dir1_files.txt dir2_files.txt

rsync has an extra plus: the directories to be compared do not necessarily have to be on the same system. Comparison can be done between different computers.

@Luis,

Yes, that’s correct. The rsync --dry-run option allows you to run a trial run of rsync without actually transferring any files. This is a great way to compare two directories and see which files are different.

The syntax for the rsync --dry-run command is as follows:

# rsync --dry-run [options] source_directory destination_directory

For example, to compare the contents of the /home/user/source directory to the /home/user/destination directory, you would use the following command:

# rsync --dry-run /home/user/source /home/user/destination

You can also perform the comparison through rsync using the --dry-run parameter so that it only shows the differences, but without doing anything.