How to sort a file in-place

You can use the -o, --output=FILE option of sort to indicate the same input and output file:

sort -o file file

Without repeating the filename (with bash brace expansion)

sort -o file{,}

⚠️ Important note: a common mistake is to try to redirect the output to the same input file (e.g. sort file > file). This does not work as the shell is making the redirections (not the sort(1) program) and the input file (as being the output also) will be erased just before giving the sort(1) program the opportunity of reading it.

The sort command prints the result of the sorting operation to standard output by default. In order to achieve an "in-place" sort, you can do this:

sort -o file file

This overwrites the input file with the sorted output. The -o switch, used to specify an output, is defined by POSIX, so should be available on all version of sort:

-o Specify the name of an output file to be used instead of the standard output. This file can be the same as one of the input files.

If you are unfortunate enough to have a version of sort without the -o switch (Luis assures me that they exist), you can achieve an "in-place" edit in the standard way:

sort file > tmp && mv tmp file