Re: `decode-coding-string' question

[Paul Pogonyshev]

David Kastrup wrote:
> Paul Pogonyshev <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >> > To know what character is encoded by this C sequence, I first translate
> >> > strings "\xc2" and "\xa9" to the appropriate (undecoded!) characters.
> >> > The resulting string of length 2 is encoded in UTF-8 and I decode it
> >> > to receive the copyright character or whatever.
> >> 
> >> Why not use `(decode-coding-string "\xc2\xa9" 'utf-8)' right away?  It
> >> gives me the right character directly.
> >
> > Because you underquoted the string.  It is actually `(decode-coding-string
> > "\\xc2\\xa9" 'utf-8)' and does nothing...
> 
> Because you overquoted the string...

...

The buffer contains 8 (eight) characters.  ?\\ ?x ?c ?2 ?\\ ?x ?a ?9.

Paul