Sponge
A special case of a
Unix 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 file 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.
[
Jargon File]
