NAME

       sponge - soak up standard input and write to a file

SYNOPSIS

       sed '...' file | grep '...' | sponge file

DESCRIPTION

       sponge  reads  standard  input  and  writes  it  out to the specified file. Unlike a shell
       redirect, sponge soaks up all its input  before  opening  the  output  file.  This  allows
       constructing pipelines that read from and write to the same file.

       It  also  creates  the  output  file  atomically  by  renaming a temp file into place, and
       preserves the permissions of the output file if it already exists.  If the output file  is
       a special file or symlink, the data will be written to it.

       If no output file is specified, sponge outputs to stdout.

AUTHOR

       Colin Watson and Tollef Fog Heen

                                            2006-02-19                                  sponge(1)