bug#27240: inconsistent and confusing output from 'ln' vs. 'cp': can this be fixed?

[Paul Eggert]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Well => is for hardlinks, and both -> and => were used
> to distinguish the operations (in v5.92-191-g24ce72f)

As I understand it, part of the motivation is consistency with 'ls':

$ ln -sv a b
'b' -> 'a'
$ ls -l b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 1 Jun  4 21:59 b -> a

With that in mind, if we were to change the format of 'ln' so that the order was 
the same as the command line, presumably it would look like this:

$ ln -sv a b
'a' <- 'b'
$ ln -v c d
'c' <= 'd'

An advantage of this format (over what we're using) is that it's easier to 
distinguish 'cp -v' from 'ln -v' output in a log. I'm not sure that's enough 
advantage to change, though. Besides, 'cp -v' vs 'mv -v' output is already 
ambiguous.