As usual, showing actual commands with their actual output can be
more helpful than vague descriptions or interpretations.

      tcpip show version
      dire /full file_name

> [...] V8.3-1H1

So that's an IA64 system?

> [...] why [...]?

   Ask HP?  I know nothing, but my guess would be that it's determining
the effective (byte-stream) file size (the hard way, by reading the
whole thing and counting the bytes).  Around here, it does it for files
with Record format: Stream_LF as well as more obvious candidates, like
Record format: Variable length.  That's what HP's port of GnuPG does,
and what mine did, until a victim complained, and I added some slightly
more clever code to use stat() on the file types where stat() gives the
right answer, and only read through the ones where stat() can't be
trusted.

alp $ tcpip show version

  HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Alpha Version V5.6 - ECO 5
  on a COMPAQ Professional Workstation XP1000 running OpenVMS V8.3