How do i copy a folder having symbolic link to another directory

Question

I am trying to copy a folder having symbolic links to another directory

Note - The actual files i intend to copy are different but just for the purpose of this question to make it easy to demonstrate issue , i am giving a example

xd003@localhost:~$ ls /data/data/com.termux/files/home/source
1.txt  2.txt  3.txt  symlink                                           
xd003@localhost:~$

Here's the source folder which has some files and a symbolic link , and the destination folder is empty

xd003@localhost:~$ cp -R /data/data/com.termux/files/home/source /sdcard/dest
cp: cannot create symbolic link '/sdcard/dest/source/symlink': Operation not permitted
xd003@localhost:~$

I copy the source folder to destination directory but i get an error stating the symlink cannot be copied over , just to confirm i check the destination directory and as expected it didn't copied the symbolic file

xd003@localhost:~$ ls /sdcard/dest/source                              
1.txt  2.txt  3.txt
xd003@localhost:~$

How do i fix this issue and copy the symbolic link in its original state

Edit - After some googling and one answer suggestion below , i tried using cp -LR command .It didn't gave me any error but it copied the symlink as folder and not in its original state , as you can see below the first line itself shows the symlink in destination is copied as a folder and in source , it indeed is a proper symbolic link

xd003@localhost:~$ ls -la /sdcard/dest/source | grep "\->"
xd003@localhost:~$ ls /sdcard/dest/source
1.txt  2.txt  3.txt  symlink
xd003@localhost:~$ ls -la /data/data/com.termux/files/home/source | grep "\->"
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 xd003 xd003   13 Jun 12 12:40 symlink -> /sdcard/data/
xd003@localhost:~$

Answer 1

You need to dereference the links:

cp -L -R files/* location/

-L is used to dereference or --dereference