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. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
