htaccess 301 redirect code is incorrect

I'm not sure whether this was done intentionally, but the current .htaccess 301 redirect code used to redirect non-www URLs to the www version of the domain actually redirects everything to the home page.

I believe this is incorrect from a SEO standpoint, as well as a end-user usability standpoint.

Example...

Some one has linked to:

http: domain.com/category/specificpage

But when the htaccess 301 redirect kicks in, they're sent to

http: www.domain.com

This is an potential issue for the search engines, and certainly for the user, who isn't shown the content they wanted.

This is the existing code in 5.1 (and I'm pretty sure its in previous versions too)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/ [L,R=301]

To (I believe) correctly 301 redirect any given page to its WWW equivalent, I use this code:

 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC]
 RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Perhaps there is some reason this is not being used? If so, I'd like to hear it - or submit this for consideration into the drupal core?