tar vs cp

Chuck Swiger cswiger at mac.com
Wed Oct 1 10:22:54 PDT 2003


Jamie wrote:
[ ... ]
>     I don't know what the actual rationale is for this. Can anyone explain
> why it is oftentimes better to tar something rather than using cp when
> copying directories and their contents?

tar handles symbolic links properly, whereas cp will "copy through" the contents 
of the link.

-- 
-Chuck




More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list