Subject: Re: bug#38587: base64-decode-region breaks encoding

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 03:52:46 +0100

Juri Linkov <[email-masked]> writes:

> 0. emacs -Q
> 1. insert a non-ASCII char, e.g. ä
> 2. select the region around the char
> 3. M-x base64-encode-region
> 4. select the region around the encoded text
> 5. M-x base64-decode-region
>
> results in a broken text.  IOW, base64-encode-region and base64-decode-region
> are not reversible, whereas their string counterparts are:
>
> (base64-decode-string (base64-encode-string "ä"))
> => "\344"

Well, that's not really reversible, either.

> (the latter expression returns the right result, but inserts broken text too)

None of these functions work on multibyte text (by design), but I see
the doc strings don't mention this.  (The manual does.)

-- 
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   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no