diff -r a6afd26caa8a Doc/library/cgi.rst
--- a/Doc/library/cgi.rst	Fri Jul 29 14:24:29 2011 -0500
+++ b/Doc/library/cgi.rst	Sat Jul 30 00:34:21 2011 +0200
@@ -150,6 +150,21 @@
            if not line: break
            linecount = linecount + 1
 
+If what you want is only to save the uploaded file, you may find more convenient
+just to rename the temporary file created during the upload, using
+:func:`os.link`::
+
+   fileitem = form["userfile"]
+   if fileitem.file:
+       fn = os.path.basename(fileitem.filename)
+       os.link(fileitem.file.name, os.path.join('uploaded_files', fn))
+
+This is especially interesting if the uploaded file is rather large since
+it will not be read in memory then written down a second time on disk.
+Note that in this case it may be worth considering changing the default
+temporary directory (using the commodities offered by :mod:`tempfile`) so that
+there is really no need to copy the file contents across different filesystems.
+
 If an error is encountered when obtaining the contents of an uploaded file
 (for example, when the user interrupts the form submission by clicking on
 a Back or Cancel button) the :attr:`done` attribute of the object for the
diff -r a6afd26caa8a Lib/cgi.py
--- a/Lib/cgi.py	Fri Jul 29 14:24:29 2011 -0500
+++ b/Lib/cgi.py	Sat Jul 30 00:34:21 2011 +0200
@@ -745,7 +745,7 @@
     def __write(self, line):
         """line is always bytes, not string"""
         if self.__file is not None:
-            if self.__file.tell() + len(line) > 1000:
+            if self._binary_file or self.__file.tell() + len(line) > 1000:
                 self.file = self.make_file()
                 data = self.__file.getvalue()
                 self.file.write(data)
@@ -854,7 +854,7 @@
 
         """
         if self._binary_file:
-            return tempfile.TemporaryFile("wb+")
+            return tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile("wb+")
         else:
             return tempfile.TemporaryFile("w+",
                 encoding=self.encoding, newline = '\n')
diff -r a6afd26caa8a Lib/test/test_cgi.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_cgi.py	Fri Jul 29 14:24:29 2011 -0500
+++ b/Lib/test/test_cgi.py	Sat Jul 30 00:34:21 2011 +0200
@@ -212,6 +212,7 @@
             for k, exp in expect[x].items():
                 got = getattr(fs.list[x], k)
                 self.assertEqual(got, exp)
+        self.assertTrue(fs['file'].file.name.startswith(tempfile.tempdir))
 
     def test_fieldstorage_multipart_non_ascii(self):
         #Test basic FieldStorage multipart parsing