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How to copy symbolic links?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026472109 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I have directory that contains some symbolic links: I need to copy them to the current directory. The resulting links should be independent from their prototypes and lead directly to their target objects. creates links to links that is not appropriate behavior. refuses to copy links to directories refuses to copy relative links to non-working directory What should I do?

Error Output

user@host:include$ find .. -type l -ls
4737414    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 user group       13 Dec  9 13:47 ../k0607-lsi6/camac -> ../../include
4737415    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 user group       14 Dec  9 13:49 ../k0607-lsi6/linux -> ../../../linux
4737417    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 user group       12 Dec  9 13:57 ..…

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Fix for: How to copy symbolic links?

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From the man page: Personally, I use for most of my heavy copying. That way, I can preserve everything - even recursively - and see the output. Of course, that is just personal preference. As to why your other options did not do what you expected, makes a link instead of copying and follows the links in the source to find the file to copy instead of copying the links themselves.

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