I see two layers ;-)

First layer, PerlIO itself. It was mainly designed to make Perl IO more portble. Which is a fine idea, as to be portable was one of Perl's key selling point. However nowadays, lots of languages are portable. So it is questionable whether this is still a string selling point. But being not portable is definitely no good for a language like Perl. So the game rule is like this now: being portable is not unique any more, but being not portable is not a choice.

Second layer, those layers done for specific purposes. For example PerlIO::gzip etc. If you need it, fine, go use it. But what if they don't exist, who cares.

Any way, performance was not a design goal for PerlIO.

Hmm... layers of abstraction.

In reply to Re^3: PerlIO slower than traditional IO? by pg
in thread PerlIO slower than traditional IO? by saintmike

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