[erlang-questions] file:open/2 and non-regular files

[Frank Hunleth]

I was a little surprised when file:open/2 failed with {error,eisdir}
when I tried to open a named pipe. It looks like the failure came from
unix_efile.c which checks for a regular file or "/dev/null". While I
can easily work around this, I was curious if anyone knew the
rationale for the restriction.

Thanks,
Frank