Ports, external or linked-in, accept something called io-lists for sending data to them. An io-list is a binary or a (possibly deep) list of binaries or integers in the range 0..255.
This means that rather than concatenating two lists before sending them to a port, one can just send them as two items in a list. So instead of
"foo" ++ "bar"
one do
["foo", "bar"]
In this example it is of course of miniscule difference. But the iolist in itself allows for convenient programming when creating output data. io_lib:format/2,3 itself returns an io list for example.
The function erlang:list_to_binary/1 accepts io lists, but now we have erlang:iolist_to_binary/1 which convey the intention better. There is also an erlang:iolist_size/1.
Best of all, since files and sockets are implemented as ports, you can send iolists to them. No need to flatten or append.
