Ok, I have once again come across a document that gives a conflicting definition of 'dereferencing' a symlink... I need someone to clear this up, or a consensus would be fine too... In my definition, when a symlink is 'dereferenced' it means that the symlink is treated as a symlink file, and not the file or directory to which it points. Like in the case of the cp -d option, when it encounters a symlink, it makes a copy of the symlink itself, not the file to which the symlink points. To further confuse us, here is a clip from the manual for Gnut (an excellent console Gnutella client for Lin & Win): follow_symlinks - Boolean, defaults to 1. If set, symlinks will be dereferenced (followed) while scanning the files in the search paths. Isn't 'follow' the exact opposite of the standard definition of 'dereferenced'? Am I wrong here? -.bill.layer.- -.those who are talking don't know, and those who know aren't talking.- -.frogtown.- -.minnesota.- -.u.s.a.-