Solutions that I have come across for replacing the contents of an input file with converted output involve using a temp file or the sponge utility.

Stephane Chazelas's answer here indicates another way involving opening the file in read-write mode as below.

tr ' ' '\t' < file 1<> file

How does this actually work without corrupting the file in question?

Solutions that I have come across for replacing the contents of an input file with converted output involve using a temp file or the sponge utility.

Stephane Chazelas's answer here indicates another way involving opening the file in read-write mode as below.

tr ' ' '\t' < file 1<> file

How does this actually work without corrupting the file in question?

Solutions that I have come across for replacing the contents of an input file with converted output involve using a temp file or the sponge utility.

Stephane Chalezas's answer here indicates another way involving opening the file in read-write mode as below.

tr ' ' '\t' < file 1<> file

How does this actually work without corrupting the file in question?

Solutions that I have come across for replacing the contents of an input file with converted output involve using a temp file or the sponge utility.

Stephane Chazelas's answer here indicates another way involving opening the file in read-write mode as below.

tr ' ' '\t' < file 1<> file

How does this actually work without corrupting the file in question?