Package: coreutils Version: 8.30-3 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
'cp -a --dereference' exhibits different behaviour to 'cp --dereference -a' -- one makes a file, the other a symlink: touch file ln -s file symlink # the following works as expected: copy is a file cp -a --dereference symlink copy # but swapping the order makes copy2 a symlink -> file cp --dereference -a symlink copy2 # expected: both copy and copy2 to be a file # observed: one is a file, one is a symlink # at least, i found it unexpected that in the second version, # --dereference was ignored. # # (if it is meant to be like this, i think the manpage should be # updated?) Thanks Richard -- System Information: Debian Release: 10.4 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-9-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages coreutils depends on: ii libacl1 2.2.53-4 ii libattr1 1:2.4.48-4 ii libc6 2.28-10 ii libselinux1 2.8-1+b1 coreutils recommends no packages. coreutils suggests no packages. -- no debconf information
