[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Sponge [was: Delete all after a pattern]



On Tue, Sep 03, 2019 at 09:54:21AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 06:28:15PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > Me too, I didn't know about sponge. Small, nifty utility, doing one
> > thing -- pretty Unixy.
> 
> Oh god, no.  Don't use sponge unless you enjoy data loss.
> 
> See <https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls#pf13>.

There are two possible issues there:

 - sponge doesn't close its stdin before writing to 'file'.
   This would be a downright error, but easy to check.

 - the issue with a crash you mention in your article (nicely
   written articles, BTW -- thanks for them!): well, don't do
   it on a "precious" file: better keep a copy around. But that
   would be general sound advice while mucking around with
   an interactive shell near your data, anyway :-)

I don't think I'd use sponge in "real" scripts, but for interactive
mucking around and one-offs it still seems handy.

And remember, kids -- do your backups :-)

Cheers
-- t

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: