I believe it's there for a couple of reasons. It seems to me that it's there mainly because the PerlIO layer makes it easy to do (from what I understand, it is done using PerlIO) and it's much faster from what I've heard. I thought I remembered someone posting benchmarks to back this.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."
update
This is the benchmark I was referring to.

In reply to Re: WHY does 'open' have a new trick? by shotgunefx
in thread WHY does 'open' have a new trick? by John M. Dlugosz

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