directory copying with cp; broken?

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <35 at ausonics.OZ> greyham at ausonics.OZ (Greyham Stoney) writes:
>... surely changing a directory into a regular file is a bit inconsistent?.

"cp" is not changing anything; it's making a copy of the contents of a
file.  It wouldn't be safe for that to be turned into an actual
directory since at least the "." entry in it would be incorrect.