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by Izkata 1135 days ago
> Without trailing slash: Copy the directory (and its contents). With trailing slash: Copy what's in the directory. This makes sense, because with the / you say you want to go "into the directory" and copy then.

Semi-related: with other stuff symlinks act the same way, for example "ls foo" will show you the symlink (even if it's to a directory), "ls foo/" will traverse the symlink (and show you what's inside the directory).