On 09/06/2012 09:24 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > A program that reads the target file will never > be able to observe an intermediate result.
Sure, but that doesn't fix the race condition I mentioned. If some other process is writing F while I run 'sed -i F', F is not replaced atomically. That's true even if the other process is another instance of 'sed'. While 'sed -i' solves some race conditions, it doesn't even come close to solving them all. Fixing this problem in general is above sed's pay grade, just as it's above shuf's.
