Re: Display corruption with binary files

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> From: Perry Smith <pedz@easesoftware.com>
> Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:55:45 -0600
> 
> On Nov 25, 2006, at 10:09 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> >> From: Perry Smith <pedz@easesoftware.com>
> >> Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:34:04 -0600
> >>
> >> On my Mac system, there is a version of emacs 21.2.1 in /usr/bin/
> >> emacs.  I have a bzip tar file.  I type:
> >>
> >> emacs foo.tar.bz2
> >>
> >> from a Mac "terminal" window (not an X11 window) and it comes up just
> >> fine: inside the terminal.  I can move around just like I remember.
> >
> > Maybe whoever built that version of Emacs for the Mac did something
> > special to it.
> 
> I get the same results with the emacs on the RS/6000 that I built  
> personally.  I simple did configure and make.  That emacs is 21.4.1.

Okay, I see that I've misunderstood the point and responded in a way
that could cause a terrible confusion.  Let me try to clarify.

Yes, Emacs does display control characters as ^c or \XXX.  However, it
does so only for certain characters (mainly, 8-bit characters and
low-end 7-bit characters).  It is quite possible that an arbitrary
binary garbage could be interpreted by Emacs as non-ASCII characters
and cause some terminal control sequence be written to the display.
Also, I think control characters that come from a display table (for
those who know what that is) are output verbatim.

So, to summarize, Emacs mostly does TRT with unprintable characters,
but not always, and visiting a binary file in the default multibyte
mode could plausibly cause related problems.

Sorry for any confusion I could have caused with my earlier messages
in this thread.