in different code

Different from what? Whence comes this code, and what purpose does it fullfil?

From stat:

11 blksize preferred block size for file system I/O

If this filehandle's file system (if any) has no preference about I/O blocksize, I'll just use 16 kB.

Could be for socket I/O - hard to tell without context.

Note, your system is binary (hence 2) and 7 is a magic number (hence 14) :-)

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}