Is it possible to update the same file using redirecting or pipe operators?

cat file1 > awk '{print $1}' > file1

@EnthusiastiC In general, no. You may use sponge for that (assuming the file you are working on is not huge). See, for instance, unix.stackexchange.com/questions/558773/…

@EnthusiastiC No. That command would truncate (empty) the two files called awk and file1 and would then try to cat the file called {print $1} into file1.

The portable solution is to write to a temporary file, and then replace the original with that new file.

With GNU awk, you can do in-place editing. See unix.stackexchange.com/questions/496179/…