File: coreutils.info,  Node: Traversing symlinks,  Next: Treating / specially,  Prev: Trailing slashes,  Up: Common options

2.8 Traversing symlinks
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The following options modify how ‘chown’ and ‘chgrp’ traverse a
hierarchy when the ‘--recursive’ (‘-R’) option is also specified.  If
more than one of the following options is specified, only the final one
takes effect.  These options specify whether processing a symbolic link
to a directory entails operating on just the symbolic link or on all
files in the hierarchy rooted at that directory.

   These options are independent of ‘--dereference’ and
‘--no-dereference’ (‘-h’), which control whether to modify a symlink or
its referent.

‘-H’
     If ‘--recursive’ (‘-R’) is specified and a command line argument is
     a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it.

‘-L’
     In a recursive traversal, traverse every symbolic link to a
     directory that is encountered.

‘-P’
     Do not traverse any symbolic links.  This is the default if none of
     ‘-H’, ‘-L’, or ‘-P’ is specified.