This might not be an issue at all and maybe I'm just missing something but this confused me a bit and hence the question in title.

Python's shutil.copyfile() has a follow_symlinks argument but it only affects the source, not the destination - i.e. when src is a symlink, it makes a difference whether the flag is set (and then it will copy the destination of that src symlink) or not (and then it will just create a new symlink in dst pointing to the src symlink's destination). I hope it's clear so far.

When dst is a link though, the flag doesn't change anything and it will always copy that file to the dst symlink's destination.

My question is... If dst is a symlink and follow_symlinks flag is not set, wouldn't it be more logical if the dst symlink was just replaced by a copy of src instead of copying src to dst's destination?

Thanks and sorry if this is just noise.

It is following the model of the posix cp command, whose equivalent to 'follow_symlinks' only affects the source.

Check out this default behavior of /bin/cp though:

    $ mkdir a b
    $ echo content > a/file
    $ ln -s non-existing b/file
    $ cp a/file b
    cp: not writing through dangling symlink 'b/file'

Shouldn't shutil.copy*() refuse to write trough a dangling symlink to non-existent
file?  (ATM it seems it just silently creates the file, or fails if it can not be
created).