tar vs cp

[Viktor Lazlo]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Charles Swiger wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 1, 2003, at 04:03 PM, Felix Deichmann wrote:
> > Chuck Swiger wrote:
> >> tar handles symbolic links properly, whereas cp will "copy through"
> >> the contents of the link.
> >
> > Also true for cp -R? :-)
>
> No, but not all systems have "cp -R", although FreeBSD does.  Likewise
> for the "-p" or "--preserve-permissions" option...

>From the manpage:

       Note that cp copies hard linked files as separate files.  If you
       need to preserve hard links, consider using tar(1), cpio(1), or
       pax(1) instead.

Cheers,

Viktor