How to get diff to NOT follow symlinks?
diff, symlink, symlink-traversal
Solution
There is an argument --no-dereference which is not mentioned in the man page but listed by diff --help.
diff -r --no-dereference dir1 dir2
Problem
I'm using `diff` to compare two huge volumes, and it is actually comparing many symlinked files over and over. Is there some way to stop this? I want it to just compare the link itself; not follow it. Or is there an alternate app that has this option?