Ponge N. [Unix] A Special Case Of A Filter That Reads Its Entire Input Before Writing Any Outpu

HomeFortune CookiesJargon File

sponge n.

[Unix] A special case of a filter that reads its
entire input before writing any output; the canonical example is a
sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently
overwrite the input file with the output data stream. If a file
system has versioning (as ITS did and VMS does now) the
sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness, because directing
filter output would just write a new version. See also slurp.

Related: