In general, for all shells,

rm works on a symbolic link itself
cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
pointing too (dereferenced)

This is without using any options to these functions.

In article <0f9803d2-1917-4d97-af3b-e858e6862862@d17g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
 Beta What <lite.on.beta@gmail.com> wrote:

> In general, for all shells,
> 
> rm works on a symbolic link itself
> cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
> pointing too (dereferenced)
> 
> This is without using any options to these functions.

On Macs 'man 7 system' discusses this. I don't know if the same manpage is on 
Linux.


https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/
man7/symlink.7.html

-- 
My name Indigo Montoya.      |    R'lyeh 38o57'6.5''S 102o51'16''E.
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Woah.  Best reference ever!

I tried reading so many online tutorials on this, but they should all
be replaced to a link to this.

On 2012-03-25, Beta What <lite.on.beta@gmail.com> wrote:
> In general, for all shells,
>
> rm works on a symbolic link itself
> cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
> pointing too (dereferenced)
>
> This is without using any options to these functions.

Are you sure about mv?

On Sunday 25 March 2012 09:24, Ike Naar conveyed the following to 
comp.unix.questions...

> On 2012-03-25, Beta What <lite.on.beta@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In general, for all shells,
>>
>> rm works on a symbolic link itself
>> cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
>> pointing too (dereferenced)
>>
>> This is without using any options to these functions.
> 
> Are you sure about mv?

mv works on the symlink, not on what the symlink points at.

-- 
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On 25-03-2012 03:45, China Blue Water Navy wrote:
> In article <0f9803d2-1917-4d97-af3b-e858e6862862@d17g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
>  Beta What <lite.on.beta@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> In general, for all shells,
>>
>> rm works on a symbolic link itself
>> cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
>> pointing too (dereferenced)
>>
>> This is without using any options to these functions.
> 
> On Macs 'man 7 system' discusses this. I don't know if the same manpage is on 
> Linux.
> 
> 
> https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/
> man7/symlink.7.html
> 

for linux the link is:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man7/symlink.7.html

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:32:57 -0700, Beta What wrote:

> In general, for all shells,

This has nothing to do with shells.

> rm works on a symbolic link itself
> cp, mv, rmdir, etc. work as if the symbolic link is the thing it is
> pointing too (dereferenced)

You got one out of three right. mv and rmdir behave like rm, i.e. mv will
rename the symlink, rmdir will complain that the symlink isn't a directory.

> This is without using any options to these functions.

In general: operations on directory entries (mv, rm, rmdir) treat a
symlink as a symlink. Operations on the contents of files (or directories)
(cp, cat) treat a symlink as the object it points to.