Re: Need some help with Rmail/mbox

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: ueno@unixuser.org,  pmr@pajato.com,  stephen@xemacs.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:26:38 -0400
> 
> >> 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?

> 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.