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 permis‐
       sions 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)