Variable: enable-multibyte-characters

enable-multibyte-characters is a buffer-local variable defined in buffer.c.

Documentation

Non-nil means the buffer contents are regarded as multi-byte characters.

Otherwise they are regarded as unibyte. This affects the display, file I/O and the behavior of various editing commands.

This variable is buffer-local but you cannot set it directly; use the function set-buffer-multibyte to change a buffer's representation. To prevent any attempts to set it or make it buffer-local, Emacs will signal an error in those cases. See also Info node (elisp)Text Representations.

View in manual

Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 20.1.

Source Code

// Defined in /usr/src/emacs/src/buffer.c
  DEFVAR_PER_BUFFER ("enable-multibyte-characters",
		     &BVAR (current_buffer, enable_multibyte_characters),
		     Qnil,
		     doc: /* Non-nil means the buffer contents are regarded as multi-byte characters.
Otherwise they are regarded as unibyte.  This affects the display,
file I/O and the behavior of various editing commands.

This variable is buffer-local but you cannot set it directly;
use the function `set-buffer-multibyte' to change a buffer's representation.
To prevent any attempts to set it or make it buffer-local, Emacs will
signal an error in those cases.
See also Info node `(elisp)Text Representations'.  */);