How to write Mma notebook input that modifies itself?

Question

Is there a straightforward way to reference and modify a cell from within itself?

This is a little outside the ordinary use case and certainly not good practice, but I would like to execute an input cell in a notebook causing the kernel to perform some action and output results and then replace or delete the current input cell and it's output.

I currently use some trivial cleanup code at the end of a routine to process data and after it has run once it isn't useful to have around and I end up deleting it manually. This got me thinking, how can I get Mathematica to do this automatically? Maybe it's possible to build it into the notebook style? Something like:

Format --> Style --> RunOnceAndDeleteInput

Answer 1

From Mathematica version 9 onward, the following expressions are possible...

To delete the current cell:

NotebookDelete[EvaluationCell[]]

To replace the current cell with a text cell:

NotebookWrite[EvaluationCell[], Cell["New Content", "Text"]]

To replace the current cell with an input cell containing an arbitrary expression:

NotebookWrite[EvaluationCell[], Cell[BoxData@ToBoxes[a + b/c], "Input"]]

Answer 2

Self-deleting cell with output:

Print@"arbitrary output";
SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], All, EvaluationCell];
SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], All, CellGroup];
NotebookDelete[];

Modifying an input cell:

Print@"arbitrary text";
SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], All, EvaluationCell];
SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], Before, CellContents];
Do[SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], After, Word], {i, 7}];
Paste[Defer[Print@"... bonus text!";]];