MULE: how to detect characters which can't be saved correctly.

MULE: how to detect characters which can't be saved correctly.

[Jimmy Lao]

Somtimes when I want to save a file containing multi-byte charaters,
the following message appears:

---------------------------------------------------------
These default coding systems were tried to encode text
in the buffer `temp':
  chinese-gd2312
However, each of them encountered these problematic characters:
  chinese-gb2312: <some numbers listed here>
The first problematic character is at point in the displayed buffer,
and C-u C-x = will give information about it.

Select one of the following safe coding systems, or edit the buffer:
  utf-8 utf-16 utf-16 utf-16 utf-16be utf-16le iso-2022-7bit
Or specify any other coding system
at the risk of losing the problematic characters.
---------------------------------------------------------

Even if I choose utf-8, the buffer won't be saved correctly, as Emacs
doesn't really recognize these characters.

So, can I detect such problematic characters after I open the file, and
before I make any modification to the buffer? Which elisp function
should I use?

Thanks.

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Re: MULE: how to detect characters which can't be saved correctly.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Jimmy Lao" <jmlao@hotmail.com>
> Bcc: 
> Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:56:46 +0000
> 
> So, can I detect such problematic characters after I open the file, and
> before I make any modification to the buffer?

How about trying to save the buffer, and then looking where it says:

> The first problematic character is at point in the displayed buffer,
> and C-u C-x = will give information about it.

Would this do what you want?