rsync - Oct 2012 - What happens after --max-delete is reached? Are updates processed?

Reading the manual page: "This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM 
files or directories." Also, according to docs, rsync exits with code 25 
if max-delete has been reached. Now, rsync starts with the deletes by 
default, and then it does updates.

My question is, if --max-delete has been reached, does rsync still 
proceed with the updates (not the deletes), or just exists immediately 
with code 25 without doing any updates? The man page doesn't specify 
either way, and looking at online posts, it would seem to suggest it 
exits as soon as max-delete has been reached.

Thanks,

Sebastian

Sebastian Arcus wrote (Wednesday, October 31, 2012 12:18 PM):
> Reading the manual page: "This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM
> files or directories." Also, according to docs, rsync exits with code
25
> if max-delete has been reached. Now, rsync starts with the deletes by 
> default, and then it does updates.
>
> My question is, if --max-delete has been reached, does rsync still 
> proceed with the updates (not the deletes), or just exists immediately 
> with code 25 without doing any updates? The man page doesn't specify 
> either way, and looking at online posts, it would seem to suggest it 
> exits as soon as max-delete has been reached.
>From trying, I'd say it continues with updating
(for whatever case that would make sense ...):

  $ mkdir a b
  $ touch a/a b/b

  $ rsync -aix --delete --max-delete=0 a/. b/.
  >f+++++++++ a
  Deletions stopped due to --max-delete limit (1 skipped)
  rsync error: the --max-delete limit stopped deletions (code 25) at
main.c(1052) [sender=3.0.9]

  $ echo $?
  25

  $ ls b/*
  b/a  b/b

Have a nice day,
Berny