Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
1–10 of 225 posts
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#2It's funny that `vidir` spawns `nano` by default on my system.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#3> sponge
Why not use > file?
> mispipe
In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#4> sponge Why not use > file? > mispipe In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.
Re sponge: the shell will open the output file for writing before invoking the command so in the example joey provides, /etc/passwd will be an empty file by the time sed opens it.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#5> sponge Why not use > file? > mispipe In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.
> Why not use > file?
I'm assuming sponge buffers everything in memory so you don't get concurrent modification bugs.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#6> sponge Why not use > file? > mispipe In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.
> Why not use > file? I'm assuming sponge buffers everything in memory so you don't get concurrent modification bugs.
Yes, if you try to sed a file back to itself for instance you'll get a truncated file (or maybe a no-op?). In fact, that's exactly the example sponge's manpage uses.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#7If curious see also
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023277
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013570
2015 (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004302
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#8> sponge Why not use > file? > mispipe In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.
Re sponge: the shell will open the output file for writing before invoking the command so in the example joey provides, /etc/passwd will be an empty file by the time sed opens it.
heh, yeah that's a mistake everyone makes once, and hopefully not more than once.
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#9I wrote a util a bit like this when I realised there was no command for emptying a directory: https://github.com/adamserafini/emptydir
Re: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)
#10It's funny that `vidir` spawns `nano` by default on my system.
Check your $EDITOR environment variable.