sed and sort command

[drmrgd]

Not silly at all! Thanks for posting that link; I think it's quite informative!

[vasa1]

I found this one also informative: http://www.unix.com/showthread.php?t=202403. I got the impression the author wasn't too keen on in place editing.

[drmrgd]

I found this one also informative: http://www.unix.com/showthread.php?t=202403. I got the impression the author wasn't too keen on in place editing.

To me personally, it all depends on what you're doing, how valuable your data is, and what are the resources available to you. For me, when I have very small text files that will experience very fast I/O and not a lot of system resources are necessary, I have no problem editing in place. The less amount of time the file is in the buffer, the less likely it is to be a victim of something like a system crash or something along those lines, which would destroy my file (note: the probability is never 0!). If the file is very large and / or has critical data that's difficult to regenerate, then I would always use a temp file to hold my work while I do the edits.

Along those lines, if I'm working from a server, now I have the possibility of a system malfunction along with the possibility of a network failure. In those cases I'm more likely to keep a temp file around just to mitigate tragic circumstances, again, depending on how large / critical the data I'm editing is.

Of course, the safest bet is to always use a temp file and never edit in place.