The Debian and Fedora package managers are like -Rc, they remove dependencies instead of failing. Whether that's good or bad is up to you; I always use -c because it's easier to read a list and type yes than it is to type all the dependencies.

-s goes "forwards" in the dependency chain (like --autoremove) and -c goes "backwards" (like other package managers).

I'm not sure if this helps at all, but let's say there's a package zizek that depends on marx and lacan, lacan depends on freud. You are interested in classical and contemporary psychoanalisis so you do pacman -S freud zizek. It installs zizek and freud explicitly and lacan and marx as a dependencies, then you decide you don't have time for Lacan and:

• pacman -R lacan will fail because zizek depends on lacan.

• pacman -R lacan zizek will delete those two and leave marx and freud alone.

• pacman -Rs lacan will also fail because zizek depends on lacan.

• pacman -Rs lacan zizek will additionally delete marx because it was installed as a dependency.

• pacman -Rss lacan zizek will additionally delete marx and freud, skipping the condition (B) of the manual.

• pacman -Rc lacan will additionally delete zizek instead of erroring out, but it will leave freud and marx. This is what i.e. apt remove does.

• pacman -Rsc lacan will delete lacan, zizek, and marx.

• pacman -Rssc lacan will delete lacan, zizek, marx and freud.