[sorry, the previous mail was apparently truncated by a bug of my MUA.]
I'd suggest treating this bug as a documentation bug. sed's man page claims:
/-----------
-i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]
edit files in place (makes backup if extension supplied)
\-----------
What sed apparently does instead is something like redirecting its
output to a temporary file and then moving that temporary file to the
original file name. This leads to the reported behaviour of symlinks
replaced by file and ACLs changed. I think this should at least be
documented in the man pages.
As already pointed out, perl -i has a similar behaviour. Perl's man page
(man perlrun) states:
/-----------
-i[extension]
specifies that files processed by the "<>" construct are to be edited
in-place. It does this by renaming the input file, opening the output
file by the original name, and selecting that output file as the default
for print() statements.
\-----------
I guess adding
"It does this by redirecting the output to a temporary file and then
moving the temporary file to the original file. "
to sed's man page would clarify things. (And could close the bug!)
Optionally add a warning that file properties might be changed.
Beste Grüße,
Johannes
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