Some files are neither directories nor regular files: they are unusual
files like symbolic links, device special files, named pipes, and
sockets. Currently, diff treats symbolic links as if they
were the pointed-to files, except that a recursive diff
reports an error if it detects infinite loops of symbolic links (e.g.,
symbolic links to ..). diff treats other special
files like regular files if they are specified at the top level, but
simply reports their presence when comparing directories. This means
that patch cannot represent changes to such files. For
example, if you change which file a symbolic link points to,
diff outputs the difference between the two files, instead
of the change to the symbolic link.
diff should optionally report changes to special files specially,
and patch should be extended to understand these extensions.