Re: 'cp -lL' behaviour conflicts with documentation

[Jim Meyering]

Tim Waugh <address@hidden> wrote:
> coreutils-5.2.1:
>
> $ mkdir /tmp/foo
> $ cp -lL /lib/libc.so.6 /tmp/foo
> $ ls -l /tmp/foo
> total 4
> lrwxrwxrwx  2 root root 13 Mar  8 10:59 libc.so.6 -> libc-2.3.4.so
>
> The man page says that -L always dereferences symbolic links, but when
> used in conjuction with -l (link files instead of copying) this is not
> honoured.
>
> (Originally RH bug #150951.)

Thanks for the report.
I suppose this is a documentation bug, since
making hard links to symlinks is not portable.
I suppose -L and -l should mention that when they are used
together, cp may try to make hard links to symbolic links.

Would you like to do that?