Re: desktop-read usage and syntax ::error, strange character :: half-SOLVED!!!

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 4:10 AM, ken <gebser@mousecar.com> wrote:

> Most of the info in .emacs.desktop is inscrutable... I don't know what the
> bejesus it is.  I even saw a bunch of lines like this:
>
>> (desktop-create-buffer <81><CE>
>
> (81x = 129d ; CEx = 206d !!!)
>
> and didn't think it terribly odd.  But then I compared that file to one of
> the backups I have of previous versions of the same file and, instead of the
> "<81><CE>", there was "206"... in every case.

The docstring for ‘desktop-create-buffer’ calls its first argument
FILE-VERSION. It is reasonable to expect that it’s an integer such as
206.

However, integers are also used as character codes, and 206 is the
character code of Î (U+00CE Latin capital letter I with circumflex).
In the UTF-8 encoding, this character is represented by two bytes 0x81
0xCE.

It is as if under some circumstances the code that saves the desktop
file writes the version as a character code instead of a decimal
integer.