Jonathan Lang writes: > Also: why distinguish between "open" and "opendir"? If the string is > the name of a file, 'open' means "open the file"; if it is the name of > a directory, 'open' means "open the directory".
Many programs open a file from a name specified by the user. Even if C<openfile> existed, many programmers would surely continue to use C<open> for this. Users being able to trick such programs into opening a directory rather than a file could be unpleasant. Smylers
