Two short hints here to improve life with swap files. The first is for the paranoid (aka, security-conscious) types, who should be sure to enable encrypted swap. It's enabled simply by going into System Preferences -> Security, then checking 'Use secure virtual memory.' You'll need to reboot for this to take effect.
The second is an easy method to see how much swap is in use. Within Terminal, run this command:
sysctl vm.swapusage
This will simply show how much is allocated (which should agree with the files in /private/var/vm), how much is currently used, and if you have encrypted swap enabled.

