Re: sed/awk/fmt question hijacked from Re: Program for quoting text like in email?

[Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz>]

On Mon, 2009-06-08 at 22:14 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:

> 
> I've been learning to use sed and awk and grep, etc., lately.
> I have a general question (probably more appropriate elsewhere, but I'm 
> going to ask here anyway.  Smack me later.).
> 
> Why is it that with sed, stuff like
> sed -e /searchterm/d
> I have to do
> sed -e /searchterm/d infile > outfile,
> and can't just do sed -e /searchterm/d file, without having to generate 
> another file?

Try sed's -i option for in-place edits -- for appropriate versions of
sed.

(see `man sed`)

Richard