clisp: encoding and decoding character sets without file I/O

Question

Suppose I have a byte vector containing data encoded using, say, utf-8 (though I won't the name of the encoding until run time). How do I decode that into a string of characters?

One way is to use #'ext:write-byte-sequence to output the data to a file and then turn around and open the file with :external-format charset:utf-8. But is there a way to do this without a scratch file?

EDIT 204-03-25 21:48:00 UTC

As required by ancient solemn custom, I hereby pay to sds

Answer 1

31.5.7. Converting between strings and byte vectors

Encodings can also be used to convert directly between strings and their corresponding byte vector representation according to that encoding.

(EXT:CONVERT-STRING-FROM-BYTES vector encoding &KEY :START :END)

converts the subsequence of vector (a (VECTOR (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8))) from start to end to a STRING, according to the given encoding, and returns the resulting string.

(EXT:CONVERT-STRING-TO-BYTES string encoding &KEY :START :END)

converts the subsequence of string from start to end to a (VECTOR (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8)), according to the given encoding, and returns the resulting byte vector.

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