diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'doc')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/coreutils.texi | 26 |
1 files changed, 24 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi index 155858b54..180629520 100644 --- a/doc/coreutils.texi +++ b/doc/coreutils.texi @@ -7388,6 +7388,9 @@ Make hard links instead of copies of non-directories. @opindex -L @opindex --dereference Follow symbolic links when copying from them. +With this option, @command{cp} cannot create a symbolic link. +For example, a symlink (to regular file) in the source tree will be copied to +a regular file in the destination tree. @item -n @itemx --no-clobber @@ -7435,8 +7438,27 @@ not yet take advantage of that. @itemx links Preserve in the destination files any links between corresponding source files. -@c Give examples illustrating how hard links are preserved. -@c Also, show how soft links map to hard links with -L and -H. +Note that with @option{-L} or @option{-H}, this option can convert +symbolic links to hard links. For example, +@example +$ mkdir c; : > a; ln -s a b; cp -aH a b c; ls -i1 c +74161745 a +74161745 b +@end example +@noindent +Note the inputs: @file{b} is a symlink to regular file @file{a}, +yet the files in destination directory, @file{c/}, are hard-linked. +Since @option{-a} implies @option{--preserve=links}, and since @option{-H} +tells @command{cp} to dereference command line arguments, it sees two files +with the same inode number, and preserves the perceived hard link. + +Here is a similar example that exercises @command{cp}'s @option{-L} option: +@smallexample +$ mkdir b c; (cd b; : > a; ln -s a b); cp -aL b c; ls -i1 c/b +74163295 a +74163295 b +@end smallexample + @itemx context Preserve SELinux security context of the file. @command{cp} will fail if the preserving of SELinux security context is not succesful. |