Replace symlinks with the actual files they are pointing at 

find /path/to/dir -type l -exec sh -c 'cp --remove-destination "$(readlink "{}")" "{}"' \;

April 24, 2012 — bashoneliners

Explanation

  • All the double quoting is necessary to handle filenames with spaces.
  • Calling sh with -exec is necessary to evaluate readlink for each symlink

Limitations

The BSD implementation of cp does not have the --remove-destination flag.

file-management symlinks
find sh cp readlink