It lets you edit in place, which is very handy. It also keeps the original file permissions, which "blah bar > foo ; mv foo bar" does not do. Convenient. Frankl

It lets you edit in place, which is very handy. It also keeps the original file permissions, which "blah bar > foo ; mv foo bar" does not do. Convenient. Frankly, I think that should be in the posix standard.