Re: reading binary, non-unix file

[Mathias Dahl]

"Mickey Ferguson" <MFerguson@peinc.com> writes:

> "J. David Boyd" <dave@adboyd.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.4677.1098473798.2017.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
> >
> > try
> >  M-x find-file-literally
> 
> Nope.  It loads the same (bad) way.
> 
> (P.S.  I found a free news server - quimby.gnus.org - that hosts
> gnu.emacs.help and allows posting, so I can now follow the thread that way.)

Can you paste some part of the file here? My guess is that
what you are looking at in emacs is a UTF-16 encoded file.

I am not sure at all, but I know that when I export stuff
from the registry to a file and just drag and drop that into
emacs it displays a lots of "^@" (ASCII 0, Ctrl-0) between
each "real" character. This is because it is UTF-16 encoded.

If I guess correctly you should be able to do this:

C-x <return> c u t f - 1 6 <return> C-x C-f m y _ f i l e . t x t <return>

where my_file.txt is the file you want to look at, and Emacs
will parse the file as it should.

/Mathias