sed -i

[Yar Tikhiy]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 12:11:06PM +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> 
> >>Aren't sed's addresses required to be cumulative across its
> >>input files?
> >>
> >>http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/sed.html
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >That makes sense for filter mode because it's equvalent to
> >concatenating the files in advance:
> >
> >	cat files ... | sed expression
> >
> >OTOH, in-place mode selected by a -i option can be seen as follows:
> >
> >	for f in files ...; do
> >		sed expression < $f > $f.tmp && mv $f $f.bak && mv $f.tmp $f
> >	done
> >
> >I.e., each file preserves its individuality.  This can be at logical
> >conflict with cumulative addresses across all files.
> >
> > 
> >
> As a Joe Random sed user, I'd agree with Yar.  The GNU behaviour makes 
> more sense in most practical examples I can think of.
> 
> Perhaps a touch of feaping creaturism, but we could just add a -I flag 
> which behaved as -i does now, and make -i behave as GNU.  I bet I 
> *could* construct examples where the current behaviour was what I desired.

Thank you for supporting me!  I've just looked at the code and it
seems to me that it should be rather easy to preserve the current
semantics under a -I flag, too.  They are too neat to throw them
away.

-- 
Yar