Re: replacing characters and whacky trans-buffer conversion

[ken <gebser@speakeasy.net>]

On 03/08/2007 08:51 PM somebody named Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>>> The first buffer is a *scratch* buffer, the modeline starts "--:".  The
>>>> second contains the *.el file mentioned in the original post; its
>>>> modeline begins "-:".
>>> For some reason this second buffer is in unibyte mode.
>>> That's the source of your problem.  Tell us how you created that buffer.
> 
>> C-x C-f
> 
> Hmm, that doesn't say much.
> Tell us the value of C-h v default-enable-multibyte-characters.
> Also shows us the first few and last few lines of the file.

In both the *.el file and in the *scratch* buffer
default-enable-multibyte-characters is t.

Here's the entirety of the *.el file:

;Replace goofy MS chars with latin1 equivalents.
;You can, of course, add to the list of chars.

; Multi-byte strings such as the one below should be toward
; the top of the list so that single-byte replacements don't
; cut them up, making subsequent searches for them impossible.
;"—" => "--"

; Also, to enter the escaped numbers, e.g. "\221", do
; C-q 2 2 1 RETURN.

;To discover the code for a new (garbage) char to be replaced,
;put the point over it and do "C-x="; the first code returned in
;the minibuffer tells you the escaped number you want to replace.

;Wrote up more on this at
;<http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en/ReplaceGarbageChars>

(defun replace-garbage-chars ()
"Replace goofy MS and other garbage characters with latin1 equivalents."
(interactive)
(save-excursion				;save the current point
  (replace-string "—" "--" nil (point-min) (point-max)); multi-byte
  (replace-string "“" "``" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "–" "--" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "–" "'" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "k," "i" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "¢" "'" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "”" "'" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "?" "`" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "?" "'" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "?" "``" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "?" "''" nil (point-min) (point-max))
  (replace-string "?" "--" nil (point-min) (point-max))
))



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