ANU Computer Science Technical Reports

TR-CS-96-05

Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
The rsync algorithm.
June 1996.

[POSTSCRIPT (92050 bytes)] [PDF (152912 bytes)]

Abstract: This report presents an algorithm for updating a file on one machine to be identical to a file on another machine. We assume that the two machines are connected by a low-bandwidth high-latency bi-directional communications link. The algorithm identifies parts of the source file which are identical to some part of the destination file, and only sends those parts which cannot be matched in this way. Effectively, the algorithm computes a set of differences without having both files on the same machine. The algorithm works best when the files are similar, but will also function correctly and reasonably efficiently when the files are quite different.

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Last modified: Tue May 31 12:55:59 EST 2011