Well, for one thing there's less filesystem overhead. It is expensive under the Bell Filesystem to successively open, read and close lots of files. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair at ucb-arpa.ARPA dual!fair at Berkeley.ARPA {ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!fair Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California