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Is there a way to sort a file in place?
To sort file in place, try: As explained in other answers, you cannot directly redirect the output back to the input file. But you can evaluate the sort command first and then redirect it back to the original file. In this way you can implement in-place sort.
Is there a command to sort text files?
Based on your requirement, sort provides several command line options for sorting data in a text file. And, here is what you get when sort command is executed on this file without any option.
Is there a command to sort a file twice?
You may write like sort -b -o filename filename, where filename specifies the same file twice as you want the output to be saved or overwrite to the original file. This command works like, it shall remove any blank spaces and the sort the contents of file and overwrite to original file.
What happens when you use sort instead of redirection?
Use the -o option of sort instead of using redirection operator, this will edit the file in place. This happens because the input / output file is truncated before its content is actually read, so sort ends up reading an already empty file.
Is there an option to sort files in Unix?
Options with sort function -o Option : Unix also provides us with special facilities like if you want to write the output to a new file, output.txt, redirects the output like this or you can also use the built-in sort option -o, which allows you to specify an output file.
When to use sort function in mix file?
Sort function with mix file i.e. uppercase and lower case : When we have a mix file with both uppercase and lowercase letters then first the lower case letters would be sorted following with the upper case letters .
Why is the output of the sort program erased?
This does not work as the shell is making the redirections (not the sort (1) program) and the input file (as being the output also) will be erased just before giving the sort (1) program the opportunity of reading it. The sort command prints the result of the sorting operation to standard output by default.