edit a file in place

["Derek Martin-9" <user=7@nabble.blu.org>]

 A coworker asked me if I could think of any Linux/Unix utility which 
would allow him to change one line of a file in place (i.e. without 
creating a temporary file a la sed and overwriting the old version a C program to do it -- you could, for example, mmap the file, move the block after the line to the right place (depending on whether the 
new line was longer or shorter), write the new line, and truncate the 
file if necessary.  This, of course, is way too much trouble to make 
it worthwhile. :) 

While personally I have no problem using temp files, I did wonder if 
there wasn't already something which could do this easily...  Anyone 
have any ideas? 

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 
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