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I've never used rcp or rsync, but your final explanation provides no illumination for me. "foo/bar/" and "foo/bar" are both directories named "bar". Copying a thing puts that thing on the destination side. It still doesn't sound like there's a difference.

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I think it makes more sense to say that, for rsync, "foo/bar/" names the contents of the directory, while "foo/bar" names the directory itself. You could perhaps think of "foo/bar/" as a shortcut for "foo/bar/*", except that it matches hidden files as well.

foo/bar/ and foo/bar are not the same if bar is a symbolic link. You can see the difference using 'ls -l'

My understanding is that "foo/bar/" is considered a short form of "foo/bar/.". Interpreting that forces following the symlink.

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