4 apr. 2020 kl. 19.22 skrev Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:

>> This does not mean that the remaining 179 calls require a copy; they just use the default value of the parameter.
> 
> And IMO the default must stay that a copy is returned, except when the
> caller says otherwise.

Yes, those can be dealt with piecemeal, and we are in no hurry to do so.

> I think in the use case where we return a copy, we should make sure
> the return value is unibyte when encoding and multibyte when decoding.

I'm not necessarily opposed to the suggestion, but why not return a unibyte string in both cases, simplifying the code? In addition, some operations (aref) are faster on unibyte. Either way, it's nothing that a caller could rely on, is there? (In particular when taking NOCOPY into account.)

> Otherwise, I think this is OK (for the master branch, obviously).

Indeed the intention, thanks.

Here is what I would commit, unless you think the string copy should really be multibyte when decoding.