copying (cp) a thing that a symlink points to rather than the symlink itself

Question

I know that the dirs ~/foo and ~/bar already exist.

I know that "cp -R ~/foo ~/bar" will recursively copy the ~/foo directory into the ~/bar directory, potentially causing ~/bar/foo to be created.

But what if foo is a symlink to a directory? Can I make the cp command copy the directory that the symlink points to, instead of the symlink itself?

Because with the above command, if foo is a symlink, then ~/bar/foo will actually be just a symlink.

Answer 1

From man cp:

   -L, --dereference
          always follow symbolic links in SOURCE

Answer 2

Use -L option like this:

cp -RL ~/foo ~/bar