Unobsolete string-to-multibyte

* lisp/subr.el: Un-obsolete string-to-multibyte, because it's a
useful function.  string-to-unibyte has already been un-obsoleted.

2 files changed, 8 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 043907755ab..3b459e587a2 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -2067,11 +2067,11 @@ The history of variable names read by 'read-variable' is recorded in
 the new variable 'custom-variable-history'.
 
 ---
-** The function 'string-to-unibyte' is no longer declared obsolete.
-We have found that there are legitimate use cases for this function,
-where there's no better alternative.  We believe that the incorrect
-uses of this function all but disappeared by now, so we are
-un-obsoleting it.
+** The function 'string-to-unibyte' and `string-to-multibyte' are no
+longer declared obsolete.  We have found that there are legitimate use
+cases for these functions, where there's no better alternative.  We
+believe that the incorrect uses of these functions all but disappeared
+by now, so we are un-obsoleting it.
 
 +++
 ** New function 'group-name' returns a group name corresponding to GID.
diff --git a/lisp/subr.el b/lisp/subr.el
index 93a98a4bdb1..d505eb3917f 100644
--- a/lisp/subr.el
+++ b/lisp/subr.el
@@ -1528,10 +1528,12 @@ be a list of the form returned by `event-start' and `event-end'."
 ;; representation.  This can be useful when one needs to examine
 ;; individual bytes at known offsets from the string beginning.
 ;; (make-obsolete 'string-to-unibyte   "use `encode-coding-string'." "26.1")
+;; string-to-multibyte is also sometimes useful (and there's no good
+;; general replacement for it), so it's also been unobsoleted in Emacs 27.1.
+;; (make-obsolete 'string-to-multibyte "use `decode-coding-string'." "26.1")
 ;; bug#23850
 (make-obsolete 'string-as-unibyte   "use `encode-coding-string'." "26.1")
 (make-obsolete 'string-make-unibyte   "use `encode-coding-string'." "26.1")
-(make-obsolete 'string-to-multibyte "use `decode-coding-string'." "26.1")
 (make-obsolete 'string-as-multibyte "use `decode-coding-string'." "26.1")
 (make-obsolete 'string-make-multibyte "use `decode-coding-string'." "26.1")