open, close, dup, dup2, lseek, read, write, fileno, etc.

[Janice Caron]

On 09/02/2008, Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> Going directly to the underlying OS functions makes for faster, more
> efficient I/O. Calling open, close, etc., on Windows makes for poor
> performance, because those functions are layered on top of the Windows
> I/O functions.

Thanks for the answer. Though my question wasn't "Why does
std.stream.File use them?", it was "Why can't I use them?", which is a
slightly different question, and I see no reason for prohibition.

It is simpler easier to write platform-independent code if you can use
open() and close(), because then you don't have to do

    version(Windows) { h = wide ? CreateFileW() : CreateFileA(); }
    version(linux) { h = open(); }

Platform independent code is also inherently easier to test, if you
don't happen to have a linux platform handy.

I wasn't complaining though - it is trivially easy to import those
functions with extern(C) so it's hardly a big deal. I was just
curious.