Re: emacs misbehaves without --unibyte

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

On Wed, 29 May 2002, Paul Stoeber wrote:

> (How is Emacs not a binary file editor when it has hexl mode?)

It's not a binary file editor if you are in a mode other than hexl.

> I started this thread because default emacs wouldn't let me navigate
> filesystems that contain funny filenames, so the "8-bit cleanness"
> discussion only applies to file name handling (although I had also
> mentioned "text/binary files" in a general statement).

For that, Miles gave the solution: you should set up your language 
environment correctly, or set file-name-coding-system explicitly.

I replied in addition to what Miles said, thinking that you really meant 
8-bit cleanliness throughout.

> Is it reasonable
> for Emacs to refuse to open existing files and to invent new file names
> in place of existing ones?

No.  But the ``reasonable'' thing is hard to implement without hints from 
the user's environment.  Please remember that Emacs decides where a file 
name starts and ends in the Dired buffer by using a set of convoluted 
regexps designed to parse the "ls -la" output for file's name, date, 
time, attributes, etc.  A stray 8-bit byte can cause spurious wrong 
matches of those regexps, and the net effect is what you reported.