Re: 'cp -lL' behaviour conflicts with documentation

[Jim Meyering]

Hi Bob,

address@hidden (Bob Proulx) wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Is it worth it to make cp manually follow a sequence of symlinks
>> when given both -L and --link?
>
> That would certainly be a nice capability.
>
> If it is not worth it could that case be made an invalid case?  That
> way there is no doubt.  Because I agree that I would not have expected
> a hard link to a symlink when using -L,--dereference.

In case anyone is interested in implementing this,
be careful to detect symlink cycles (use cycle-check.[ch]).

You'll have to specify what happens when there is no referent,
either because of a dangling symlink or because of a cycle.
If that happens for a command line argument,
then it should provoke a non-zero exit.
If it happens for a non-command-line-argument (e.g., during
a recursive traversal), then what?  In any case, it deserves
a diagnostic.  Whether it should exit nonzero...  I could
go either way.  I'm leaning towards making it fail.