Re: How to view raw text in Emacs?

[Ben Bacarisse]

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:

> N. Jackson (2018-04-05 14:56 -0400) wrote:
>
>> Sometimes when I'm using Emacs I want to see "what's really there"
>> rather than the view of the text that Emacs is showing me. So far, I
>> have not figured out how to do this. Usually after casting about in
>> Emacs for a solution, the frustration builds sufficiently that I switch
>> to Kate of Gedit to see what I want to see. I would like to learn how to
>> do this in Emacs.
>>
>> For example, I open etc/enriched.txt. I realise that there is more there
>> than I'm seeing and am curious to see what is actually in the file. I
>> try `M-x fundamental-mode RET' which changes nothing. (I don't know why
>> I think it should, but that always seems to be what I try first.) Then I
>> see in the mode line that I'm in "Enriched" mode, so I try `M-x
>> enriched-mode RET' to turn it off, which does seem to turn it off (it's
>> nice that it's intuitive that way), but the view in the buffer doesn't
>> change. I try `M-x set-buffer-coding-system RET raw-text RET', but that
>> doesn't help either. I try `M-x set-buffer-coding-system RET
>> no-conversion RET', but again there is no apparent change.
>>
>> Clearly I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure what it is. Any
>> pointers would be welcome.
>
> Perhaps "M-x find-file-literally" is what you are looking for.

A word of caution from this function's description

  If Emacs already has a buffer which is visiting the file, you
  get the existing buffer, regardless of whether it was created
  literally or not.

And another option...  Sometimes I find hexl-mode the right thing,
though it involves more learning because it's such a different kind of
view of the buffer.

-- 
Ben.