25.13 File Format Conversion

Emacs performs several steps to convert the data in a buffer (text, text properties, and possibly other information) to and from a representation suitable for storing into a file. This section describes the fundamental functions that perform this format conversion, namely insert-file-contents for reading a file into a buffer, and write-region for writing a buffer into a file.

• Overview		insert-file-contents and write-region.
• Round-Trip		Using format-alist.
• Piecemeal		Specifying non-paired conversion.