This should decode to нуль but doesn't (I get the same string instead):

(decode-coding-string "íîëü" 'cp1251)

Am I missing something obvious? Do I need to encode the string to
something else?

Ted

Ted Zlatanov wrote:

Guessing you're using a new multibyte/unicode emacs, and noting that I
do not currently fully understand emacs encoding handling, but...
probably - try:

(decode-coding-string (encode-coding-string "íîëü" 'iso-8859-1) 'cp1251)

Ted Zlatanov wrote:

0. «íóëü», not «íîëü»

1. (decode-coding-string (string-make-unibyte "íóëü") 'cp1251)

That's not important, the original problem remains, even with a
different spelling of the word.

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:19:11 +0400 Dmitry Dzhus sphinx.net.ru> wrote:

Thanks.

There should probably be a specific function for this:

(decode-coding-string-as-unibyte "íóëü" 'cp1251)

ditto for decode-coding-region. Should I add it or is that not
generally useful? A flag is not as good because both functions have
several flags already.

Ted

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

Personally, I think it's not useful, since decode-coding-region and
decode-coding-string are used only on unibyte text. But feel free to
raise this on emacs-devel.

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:04:42 +0300 Eli Zaretskii gnu.org> wrote:

How would you recommend decoding text from particular encodings? Given
text like the one shown above in a buffer, only decode-coding-region
seems to DTRT, and it's not interactive.

Context: I have a file full of CP1251 data and don't want to use Perl's
Encode module because I'm stubborn and think Emacs should handle it :)

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:06:59 +0400 Dmitry Dzhus sphinx.net.ru> wrote:

Ted Zlatanov wrote:

Just in case: If you have a file full of cp1251, and you know it's
cp1251, it' s usually best to just open it as cp1251 in the first
place!

C-x RET c cp1251 C-x C-f myfile.txt

It's typically only if you've got a file full of fragments in
different encodings (horrible mail spool formats and the like) that
you want to decode and reencode particular subregions of whole files.

If you've already opened a file and its encoding is misdetected,
you can also hit
C-x RET r cp1251
to "revert" the buffer to the file reopened in the specified encoding.

If you mean interactively, i.e. you visited a buffer and then
discovered that it was decoded incorrectly, and the actual encoding is
different, then "C-x RET c cp1251 RET M-x revert-buffer RET" should do
what you want, I think.

What about the rest of the file? is it encoded in some other encoding?
If not, then the above recipe should do. If it doesn't, please tell
more details.