rsync output: what do the characters on the left mean?

I’ve paraphrased here the relevant portion of the manpage for people who have trouble finding it:

The first character indicates what is happening to the file:

• < means that a file is being transferred to the remote host (sent).
• > means that a file is being transferred to the local host (received).
• c means that a local change/creation is occurring for the item (such as the creation of a directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).
• h means that the item is a hard link to another item (requires –hard-links).
• . means that the item is not being updated (though it might have attributes that are being modified).
• * means that the rest of the itemized-output area contains a message (e.g. “deleting”).

The second character indicates what type of directory entry it is. Specifically:

• f for file
• d for directory
• L for symbolic link
• D for device
• S for special file (e.g. socket or fifo)

The remaining columns are described below:

• c means either that a regular file has a different checksum or that a symlink, device, or special file has a changed value.
• s means the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by the file transfer.
• t or T:
  • t means the modification time is different and is being updated to the sender’s value
  • T means that the modification time will be set to the transfer time
• p means the permissions are different and are being updated to the sender’s value
• o means the owner is different and is being updated to the sender’s value
• g means the group is different and is being updated to the sender’s value
• . unused

The following columns may not be present, depending on your transfer options

• a means that the ACL information changed
• x means that the extended attribute information changed