How to replace a symbolic link with a copy of a file it links to?

Question

Having a (single, no batch filesystem processing needed) symlink, what a command line to use to replace it with a copy of the file it links to?

Solution

cp --remove-destination "$(readlink <symlink>)" <symlink>

Comments

[Lin Song Yang]

error "-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'" when executed from a debian environment.

[Stéphane Chazelas]

If <symlink> is a symlink to a relative path, that only works if the <symlink> is in the current directory. You may want to use readlink -f. Or if using zsh: cp --remove-destination path/to/symlink(:A) path/to/symlink