Terminal command(s) to copy user directory from one system to another

Your : was in the wrong place, but you would have figured that out very quickly.

You want the -E option so all the Mac extended attributes and ACLs get copied.

The command given will create /Users/userB/userA/...

You should take a small directory tree and practice on that to make sure you get what you want.

rsync -avr /Users/userA userB@destinationHost:/Users/userB

If you DO NOT have a userA on destinationHost, you could use

rsync -E -avr /Users/userA userB@destinationHost:/Users/

Then on destinationHost, rename userA to userB

sudo mv /Users/userA /Users/userB

You should then spot check your work with

/bin/ls -aleO@ /Users/

/bin/ls -aleO@ /Users/userB/

Against the originals.

If userB already exists, this gets trickier.

You could use the command you specified with the -E, and then try something like

find /Users/userB/userA/ -print0 | xargs -0 -J {} mv {} /Users/userB/

You may have an empty userA directory after you are done. I'm hoping you have a userA directory when you are done.

As I said you should practice with some simiple throwaway directories to make sure you have all the stuff working they way you desire.

Another approach might be to use Carbon Copy Cloner. It can do this, and it is a GUI, and it uses rsync under the covers, and the author contributes to the rsync open sources to keep the Mac bits up to date, and then ships the lastest inside Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC has a 1 month free demo, so you might be able to do everything you need during the demo period.