bug#29788: chown: recursive operation with "-H" flag does not work as documented

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 12/20/2017 04:52 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 12/20/2017 12:58 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
>> Thus, I think this not a bug in chmod or the documentation, but in the
>> your expectations.
> 
> I think his expectations are what POSIX requires. For chown -H -R, POSIX 
> says that...

This is where I started off, but POSIX doesn't say anything about the
"--dereference" flag. When chown told me to pick either "-H" or "-L", I
thought it was asking me to pick one mode of operation, either

  a) chown -R -L, or
  b) chown -R -H

In fact, it was asking me to choose one of

  c) chown --dereference -R -L, or
  d) chown --dereference -R -H

Should "chown --dereference" be equivalent to "chown"? If so, then

  chown --dereference -R -H = chown -R -H

is specified by POSIX.

At this point, you could talk me into either interpretation.