Pros and Cons Of Reading Format Name Or File Name

I understand the need to read format names when you have multiple record
formats in a file and only want one or the other, but what if any advantages
are there to always reading record format names.  IMHO it is more confusing
to have a program full of reads to format names as they can vary so much
from the file names (in our case I am referring to logicals here).  And why
do we need to always write to record format names instead of file names even
when there is only one record format in the file?

I would be interested to see what others are doing (reading formats or file
names) and opinions on this which is better.