Andreas Gruenbacher wrote: > In the two directories case, I really don't see when following symlinks > would be desirable. Here, diff is comparable to a tool like tar, for > example -- in the tar case, I want to archive what's really there; in > the diff case, I want to compare what's really there.
Take an example. I often move subdirectories and big files from one disk to another one, for disk space reasons, and leave in a symlink that points to the new location. When I now prepare a backup, I'll use "tar chf -". And to compare the backup with the original contents, I use "diff -r". I claim that this use-case is more frequent than the one which does not follow symlinks. Proof: GNU diff users were happy with the existing behaviour for 20 years. Bruno
