cat is doing nothing useful here. Your command is equivalent to awk '{do_stuff()}' myfile.txt | sort -u | column --table > new-myfile.txt The only thing y

cat is doing nothing useful here. Your command is equivalent to awk '{do_stuff()}' myfile.txt | sort -u | column --table > new-myfile.txt The only thing you’ve changed is that you’re sending the output to a new file. That’s fine, but it’s what sponge is avoiding.