From 49f9394ef1fcc49d15795ab4caf75bda0b7c00cb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Alex van de Sandt <me@alexvds.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2025 14:54:26 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Clarify string encoding

---
 src/telemetry/var.rs | 10 ++++++----
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/telemetry/var.rs b/src/telemetry/var.rs
index e5530f4..ce12483 100644
--- a/src/telemetry/var.rs
+++ b/src/telemetry/var.rs
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-use std::ffi::{CStr, c_char};
+use std::ffi::c_char;
 
 use indexmap::IndexMap;
 use num_enum::TryFromPrimitive;
@@ -76,11 +76,13 @@ impl VarHeader {
     }
 }
 
-// TODO: There may be some weird encoding on these strings
 fn string_from_c_chars(buf: &[c_char]) -> String {
     assert!(buf.contains(&0));
-    let cstr = unsafe { CStr::from_ptr(buf.as_ptr()) };
-    cstr.to_string_lossy().into_owned()
+    // Strings in iRacing are all ISO-8859-1, which is effectively a subset of UTF-8. Therefore, it
+    // is safe to interpret a string buffer as unsiged bytes and cast them to UTF-8 codepoints.
+    //
+    // https://forums.iracing.com/discussion/comment/703469/#Comment_703469
+    buf.iter().map(|c| *c as u8 as char).collect()
 }
 
 #[cfg(test)]
-- 
2.51.2