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.-