[tpm] more problems than solutions this week

[Fulko Hew]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:44 PM, <arocker at vex.net> wrote:

>
> I see Indy's answered your problem, but just a point on the topic:
>
> > But what I've found is that the inode doesn't change!
> > [so I'd assume that the ">" redirection simply rewinds
> > the write pointer to offset zero and writes the string
> > and then truncates the file at that point.]
> >
>
> That's why "sort file > file" (and similar commands) is fatal; it resets
> the pointer on the (output) file, then starts trying to read from the
> (input) file, whose pointer now says it's at EOF.
>

And here I always thought it was because it opens the output
file first clobbering the original data before it gets a chance
to open the original data.

It just goes to show you, you DO learn something new every few decades.  :-)
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