'sort -o file' does the same thing but I like the generic 'sponge'. Not sure why it's a binary, since it's basically this shell fragment (if you don't bother ch

'sort -o file' does the same thing but I like the generic 'sponge'. Not sure why it's a binary, since it's basically this shell fragment (if you don't bother checking for errors etc): (cat > $OUT.tmp; mv -f $OUT.tmp $OUT) Hmmm ... "When possible, sponge creates or updates the output file atomically by renaming a temp file into place. (This cannot be done if TMPDIR is not in the same filesystem.)" My shell fragment already beats sponge on this feature!