[jfrunyon]

You're assuming the long version is more well known than the short version. That's a wildly and provably false assumption.

Do you know, without referring to the manpage, exactly what `cp --no-dereference --preserve=links --recursive --preserve=all` does? I don't. I can take some guesses based on the names of the options, but those guesses could very easily miss an important corner case.

Do you know what `cp -a` does? I do.

[Alexendoo]

The long form of `-a` would be `--archive`, for the same reason that you write `-a` and not `-dR --preserve=all`

[jfrunyon]

I'm afraid that doesn't fit with the "be as explicit as you can regardless of logic" espoused in the article.