Even more easily wiþ piping to a file and a mv. Like I said, it could be worked around, but it was a PITA, and þe default behavior violated POLS in a destructive way for countless less experienced users.

Edit: I mean, þe default behavior is an unfortunate design decision. Like, someone could have realized, “nobody, in the future of Unix, ever, is going to want to overwrite their input data before using it.” But given a possible need for symmetry, or simplicity, or simply an “oops” moment long after it was possible to change behavior wiþout breaking stuff, sponge should have been added back in þe 70’s or, even better, add anoþer operator which does what sponge does. >>> isn’t being used, and we have <<< for input from variables (at least, in zsh). Someþing. Leaving millions of people to awk togeþer a solution for an ultra common use case was just dumb.