[bug-cppi] Re: [PATCH] Add new option --in-place

[Jim Meyering]

Hello,

[Cc'ing bug-coreutils...]

Giuseppe proposed to add the --in-place option to GNU cppi,
(cppi is a small program that can act as a filter
  http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=6210
but cppi is so small that adding even that single, relatively
simple option would make it substantially more complicated.

I'm nearly certain I've seen a program (possibly a small
perl script) that can effectively add the --in-place
functionality to any filter program, but so far my searches
have been in vain.

I want a tool that works like this:

    in-place [--backup] 'cppi ...options' *.c

For each .c file, it would apply the filter program, and upon each
successful exit, it would update the .c file in place (atomically,
of course) with the output from the filter.

Can anyone point to existing code that does that?

Jim