Problem with Bash output redirection

Question

I was trying to remove all the lines of a file except the last line but the following command did not work, although file.txt is not empty.

$cat file.txt |ta         


        

Answer 1

This works nicely in a Linux shell:

replace_with_filter() {
  local filename="$1"; shift
  local dd_output byte_count filter_status dd_status
  dd_output=$("$@" <"$filename" | dd conv=notrunc of="$filename" 2>&1; echo "${PIPESTATUS[@]}")
  { read; read; read -r byte_count _; read filter_status dd_status; } <<<"$dd_output"
  (( filter_status > 0 )) && return "$filter_status"
  (( dd_status > 0 )) && return "$dd_status"
  dd bs=1 seek="$byte_count" if=/dev/null of="$filename"
}

replace_with_filter file.txt tail -1

dd's "notrunc" option is used to write the filtered contents back, in place, while dd is needed again (with a byte count) to actually truncate the file. If the new file size is greater or equal to the old file size, the second dd invocation is not necessary.

The advantages of this over a file copy method are: 1) no additional disk space necessary, 2) faster performance on large files, and 3) pure shell (other than dd).