It isn't really the same. Anyone that needs access to something in /etc can get what they're looking for without having the first pierce a difficult binary for

It isn't really the same. Anyone that needs access to something in /etc can get what they're looking for without having the first pierce a difficult binary format. Deciphering what they get back is another issue, but typically it's just a text file, so you can generally figure out how to parse it if you need to.