> The proposed API seems strange to me. Is there an illustration of how 
> it might be used? I suspect it wouldn’t be all that useful, and could 
> more or less be implemented with the existing methods:

True, but having it a Buffered method would allow it to optimize buffer usage and avoid some memory copies (the first read() call and the peek() call, for example).

In any case, Guido was rather against this proposal, so I'm not sure there's much sense in keeping discussing it.