René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"DiffLine.rawContent() returns string instead of Buffer, causing non-UTF-8 encoding corruption","articleBody":"## Description\n\nThanks to the nodegit maintainers for this excellent library! \n\nThis issue was debugged with the assistance of Cursor and Opus 4.5.\n\n### Current Behavior\n\n`DiffLine.rawContent()` returns a JavaScript `string` type, but the underlying libgit2 `git_diff_line.content` is a raw byte pointer (`const char *`) that is **not NUL-terminated** and may contain non-UTF-8 encoded content (e.g., GBK, GB18030).\n\nThe current implementation in `lib/diff_line.js`:\n\n```javascript\nvar _rawContent = DiffLine.prototype.content;  // Save original native method\n\nDiffLine.prototype.content = function() {\n  // ...\n  this._cache.content = Buffer.from(this.rawContent())\n    .slice(0, this.contentLen())\n    .toString(\"utf8\");\n  return this._cache.content;\n};\n\nDiffLine.prototype.rawContent = function() {\n  return _rawContent.call(this);  // Calls native binding\n};\n```\n\nThe problem is that `_rawContent` (the native binding) already converts `const char *` to a JavaScript string, presumably using `v8::String::NewFromUtf8()` or similar, which **assumes UTF-8 encoding**.\n\n### Expected Behavior\n\n`rawContent()` should return a `Buffer` containing the original bytes, allowing users to detect and decode the encoding themselves:\n\n```javascript\nDiffLine.prototype.rawContent = function() {\n  // Return Buffer instead of string\n  return _rawContent.call(this);  // Should return Buffer\n};\n\nDiffLine.prototype.content = function() {\n  // ... existing implementation\n  return this.rawContent()\n    .slice(0, this.contentLen())\n    .toString(\"utf8\");\n};\n```","author":{"url":"https://github.com/liangjingyang","@type":"Person","name":"liangjingyang"},"datePublished":"2026-01-13T01:51:21.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":0},"url":"https://github.com/2038/nodegit/issues/2038"}