Re: emacs-26 8f18d12: Improve documentation of decoding into a unibyte buffer

[Stefan Monnier]

> If the input string is unibyte, then using string-to-unibyte will be
> also odd.  And if it's multibyte, the using encode-coding-string is
> not really odd, is it?

It's odd that the input string be multibyte since it's supposed to be
encoded, yes.  And it's also odd to call encode-coding-string on
a string that we assume to be encoded (just because the string is
multibyte doesn't make it less odd).

In any case, I think we should strive to avoid using "encoded" multibyte
strings.  I can't remember ever having had a need for those, but when
needed the way to turn a unibyte string into an equivalent multibyte
string (without changing the fact that it's encoded) is
string-to-multibyte.

>> I agree that removing the call altogether is the better option.
>
> Right.  In that case we need to document that the function expects as
> input either a unibyte string or a pure-ASCII string.

OK, I'll do that.


        Stefan