sorting and reversing lines of a file

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <14660007 at hpsal2.HP.COM> morrell at hpsal2.HP.COM (Michael Morrell) writes:
>...  Since the shell is truncating file2 before cat is
>invoked, you need a smarter shell, not a smarter cat, to avoid this problem.

"Smartness" has nothing to do with it; "> file2" is DEFINED to truncate
(i.e. overwrite) an existing file.  The shell is doing exactly what it's
told.  The problem lies in the user's brain somewhere...