On 05/24/2014 04:07 PM, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > The cp(1) man page does not describe the behavior on symbolic links > when copying recursively. It appears that in such a case, cp does not > dereference the links (this is also what the info file says: "When > copying from a symbolic link, `cp' normally follows the link only > when not copying recursively."). Tested with cp (GNU coreutils) 8.21 > on Debian/unstable. > > As the usual behavior of utilities on symbolic links is to follow the > links, this may be surprising to the user who only reads the man page > (even if he knows POSIX, as POSIX doesn't specify the behavior if > only -R is used). > > So, the man page should say that by default (e.g. without -H, -L, -P), > cp follows source symbolic links only when not copying recursively.
I suppose we could adjust --help (and thus the man page) like: - -R, -r, --recursive copy directories recursively + -R, -r, --recursive copy directories recursively (implies -P)
