Re: Need some help with Rmail/mbox

[Stefan Monnier]

>> >> The only reliable way to do decoding in buffers is by using
>> >> the `destination' argument to decode-coding-region so that you can
>> >> decode from a unibyte buffer into a multibyte buffer.
>> > Why is that the only reliable method, and what do you suggest as the
>> > value of `destination' argument for it to DTRT?
>> As I said in my message: use the dest arg so as to "decode from
>> a unibyte buffer into a multibyte buffer", so `destination' should be
>> ... a multibyte buffer.
> And the source a unibyte one?

Yes, of course.

>> As for why it's the only reliable method, it's because:
>> >> Dealing with "bytes in a multibyte buffer" or with "non-ascii chars in
>> >> a unibyte buffer" (as is necessarily the case either as source or as
>> >> destination if you do the decoding in-place) is just too delicate in my
>> >> experience (and of course, it's also somewhat inefficient).
>> I'm not sure which part of the above paragraph is unclear.
> The fact that other methods are not 100% reliable does not yet mean
> that this one is.  I thought you had a more specific explanation why
> this method is reliable.

No, I don't have such an explanation, except that the most natural input
for decoding is a unibyte (string|buffer) and the most natural output is
a multibyte (string|buffer).  I'd expect that to be pretty obvious.


        Stefan