when I saw the CUFP on the Newest Nodes page, I thought there would be a "-a" (add) option and a "-r" option which would allow easy/fast ability to modify standard TODO files

That would be useful! I did not add those two arguments simply because my own TODO file has several sections (ASAP, Work, Projects, etc). I have emacs lisp to renumber the lines in a section. I would have to give the Perl script -section and -number arguments.

It could all be done but for now this seems to work well enough. :)

Update: Or "crontab -e" - launches the same editor to modify your crontab entries. So why not "t -e"?
I am more likely to be adding an item or keeping the editor open in a window while I remove things from the list than I am to be viewing the it.