rsync - Mar 2009 - Question about the --backup option;

The --backup option in GNU mv, and GNU cp extend the behavior of the
-b option in a significant way, I believe. "--backup" allows
specification of versioned backups, especially numbered backups, e.g.
The old version of file, foo, becomes foo.~N~, where N is a decimal
number. There is no mention of such a feature, that I can find, in
info rsync, or man rsync.  Is this feature available in rsync? If so,
is it available under another name?

Actually, the feature may be available under "-b", in mv and cp.
The man page seems to indicate otherwise, so I've never tested it.
I've just used "--backup=t", and loved it. Now how do I get
similar
behavior from rsync?

Thanks for your help.
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net

On Mon, 2009-03-16 at 09:55 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> The --backup option in GNU mv, and GNU cp extend the behavior of the
> -b option in a significant way, I believe. "--backup" allows
> specification of versioned backups, especially numbered backups, e.g.
> The old version of file, foo, becomes foo.~N~, where N is a decimal
> number. There is no mention of such a feature, that I can find, in
> info rsync, or man rsync.  Is this feature available in rsync? If so,
> is it available under another name?
> 
> Actually, the feature may be available under "-b", in mv and cp.
> The man page seems to indicate otherwise, so I've never tested it.
> I've just used "--backup=t", and loved it. Now how do I get
similar
> behavior from rsync?
Rsync does not support numbered backups, but you could specify a
different backup suffix on each rsync run via --suffix.

-- 
Matt