Thanks Ed Maste, Conrad Meyer, Kyle Evans and Kubilay Kocak!
I ran a benchmark:
vstinner@freebsd$ env/bin/python -m pyperf command -v -- ./python -c 'import subprocess, sys; args=[sys.executable, "-sS", "-c", "pass"]; subprocess.run(args)'
The optimization made subprocess almost 4x faster on FreeBSD!
vstinner@freebsd$ env/bin/python -m pyperf compare_to ref.json closefrom.json
Mean +- std dev: [ref] 176 ms +- 1 ms -> [closefrom] 46.6 ms +- 1.2 ms: 3.77x faster (-74%)
129 ms were wasted in calling 229 284 times close(fd)!