Thanks for your explanation. I definitely oversimplified above. In my defense, I did it because it bothered me that what I saw as the biggest opening for performance pain (file slurp) was being ignored. Having seen this sort of thing happen all too often in real life, I am possibly a little oversensitive. I get this image of a guy being rushed into an ER, blood spurting all over from some massive trauma, and telling the docs that he'd like them to look at his hangnail instead. ;)