Re: replacing characters and whacky trans-buffer conversion

[ken]

Sorry... in the below it should say 5542 instead of 5442.


On 03/07/2007 03:48 PM somebody named ken wrote:
> Okay, try this:
> 
> Create two buffers in one emacs frame.
> 
> In one of them enter C-q 5442 RETURN.  You should get a Greek character
> which looks much like a German double-s.
> 
> Using only emacs, put this character into the kill buffer and yank it
> into the second buffer.
> 
> When I do this, I get a different character in the second buffer.  Its
> coding (ascertained via C-x=) is also different.
> 
> Go back to the first buffer and do another yank.  What character do you
> get.  I get the original character, the one inserted with C-q 5442 RETURN.
> 
> 
> 
> On 03/06/2007 10:15 AM somebody named ken wrote:
>> An email comes in with this (emdash) character in it: –
>>
>> It looks like an em-dash until the text containing it is pasted into an
>> emacs buffer; then it appears as a series of "garbage characters".
>> (Copy and paste the emdash into an emacs buffer yourself, and perhaps
>> you'll see what I mean.)
>>
>> To me and, possibly to you, this emdash appears in emacs as nine (9)
>> "garbage" characters.
>>
>> Because I want to programmatically replace these 9 garbage characters
>> into something latin1-friendly, I copy-and-paste these nine characters
>> into an *.el file containing a line like this:
>>
>>   (replace-string "–" "--" nil (point-min) (point-max))
>>
>> The sought string (i.e., the first argument above) isn't found, however
>> because, for some whacky reason, the emdash pasted into the *.el file is
>> different-- by one character-- from exactly the same emdash pasted into
>> the other emacs buffer (the one I'm saving the email in).
>>
>> In the emacs buffer containing the email, the fourth garbage character
>> (as shown by C-u C-x=) is:
>>
>>   character: β (05542, 2914, 0xb62)
>>     charset: greek-iso8859-7
>>           (Right-Hand Part of Latin/Greek Alphabet (ISO/IEC 8859-7): 
>> ISO-IR-126)
>>  code point: 98
>>      syntax: word
>>    category: g:Greek
>> buffer code: 0x86 0xE2
>>   file code: not encodable by coding system undecided-unix
>>        font: -ETL-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-160-72-72-C-80-ISO8859-7
>>
>> In the *.el buffer, the fourth garbage character (which should be
>> exactly the same character) is:
>>
>>   character: â (0342, 226, 0xe2)
>>     charset: eight-bit-graphic (8-bit graphic char (0xA0..0xFF))
>>  code point: 226
>>      syntax: whitespace
>>    category:
>> buffer code: 0xE2
>>   file code: 0xE2 (encoded by coding system raw-text-unix)
>>        font: -ETL-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-160-72-72-C-80-ISO8859-1
>>
>> I tried entering "C-q 5542 RETURN" into the *.el file, but emacs
>> immediately makes it into the second (â, or 0342) character.  Doing the
>> same into the other emacs buffer (containing my copy of the email)
>> *does* enter the good (β, or 05542) character.
>>
>> All I really want is for the above replace-string function to work as
>> expected.  But emacs consistently converts that fourth character in the
>> emdash string into a different character, subsequently causing the
>> search to fail.  So how do I get the correct "garbage" characters into
>> the first argument of the replace-string function-- i.e., into the *.el
>> file?
>>
>>
>> tnx,
>> ken
>>
>>
> 
> 


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