w and r flags mailing to programs

I find that I basically always want to use the flags w (this action
failed if the program exits non-zero) and r (don't add a trailing
newline) when I'm mailing to a program.  That's normal, isn't it?  It
seems odd to me that these aren't the default when mailing to programs.
Am I misinterpreting what these flags are for?

-- 
Roderick Schertler
roderick(_at_)argon(_dot_)org