33.10.3 Coding Systems in Lisp

Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems:

Function: coding-system-list &optional base-only

This function returns a list of all coding system names (symbols). If base-only is non-nil, the value includes only the base coding systems. Otherwise, it includes alias and variant coding systems as well.

Function: coding-system-p object

This function returns t if object is a coding system name.

Function: check-coding-system coding-system

This function checks the validity of coding-system. If that is valid, it returns coding-system. Otherwise it signals an error with condition coding-system-error.

Function: coding-system-change-eol-conversion coding-system eol-type

This function returns a coding system which is like coding-system except for its eol conversion, which is specified by eol-type. eol-type should be unix, dos, mac, or nil. If it is nil, the returned coding system determines the end-of-line conversion from the data.

Function: coding-system-change-text-conversion eol-coding text-coding

This function returns a coding system which uses the end-of-line conversion of eol-coding, and the text conversion of text-coding. If text-coding is nil, it returns undecided, or one of its variants according to eol-coding.

Function: find-coding-systems-region from to

This function returns a list of coding systems that could be used to encode a text between from and to. All coding systems in the list can safely encode any multibyte characters in that portion of the text.

If the text contains no multibyte characters, the function returns the list (undecided).

Function: find-coding-systems-string string

This function returns a list of coding systems that could be used to encode the text of string. All coding systems in the list can safely encode any multibyte characters in string. If the text contains no multibyte characters, this returns the list (undecided).

Function: find-coding-systems-for-charsets charsets

This function returns a list of coding systems that could be used to encode all the character sets in the list charsets.

Function: detect-coding-region start end &optional highest

This function chooses a plausible coding system for decoding the text from start to end. This text should be a byte sequence (see section 33.10.7 Explicit Encoding and Decoding).

Normally this function returns a list of coding systems that could handle decoding the text that was scanned. They are listed in order of decreasing priority. But if highest is non-nil, then the return value is just one coding system, the one that is highest in priority.

If the region contains only ASCII characters, the value is undecided or (undecided).

Function: detect-coding-string string highest

This function is like detect-coding-region except that it operates on the contents of string instead of bytes in the buffer.

See section 37.6 Process Information, for how to examine or set the coding systems used for I/O to a subprocess.