spongy

adj 1: resembling a sponge in having soft texture and

compressibility; "spongy bread" [syn: {squashy}, {squishy}]

2: like a sponge in being able to absorb liquids and yield it

back when compressed

sponge

A special case of a {Unix} {filter} that reads its entire

input before writing any output; the canonical example is a

sort utility. Unlike most filters, a sponge can conveniently

overwrite the input file with the output data stream. If a

file system has {file versioning} (as {ITS} did and {VMS} does

now) the sponge/filter distinction loses its usefulness,

because directing filter output would just write a new

version.

See also {slurp}.

[{Jargon File}]

(1995-01-18)