sed edit file in place

Question

I am trying to find out if it is possible to edit a file in a single sed command without manually streaming the edited content into a new file and

Answer 1

sed supports in-place editing. From man sed:

-i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]

    edit files in place (makes backup if extension supplied)

Example:

Let's say you have a file hello.txtwith the text:

hello world!

If you want to keep a backup of the old file, use:

sed -i.bak 's/hello/bonjour' hello.txt

You will end up with two files: hello.txt with the content:

bonjour world!

and hello.txt.bak with the old content.

If you don't want to keep a copy, just don't pass the extension parameter.