Re: `read-from-minibuffer' seems to always return a multibyte string, but why?

> From: Nickolai Dobrynin <[email protected]>
> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2026 05:47:52 +0200
> 
> I ran M-x ielm, executed
> 
> (set-buffer-multibyte nil)
> (read-from-minibuffer "Input: ")
> 
> and got a multibyte string back.

Please show exactly what you did.  If I do this:

 emacs -Q
 M-: (set-buffer-multibyte nil) RET
 M-: (multibyte-string-p (read-from-minibuffer "? " nil nil nil nil nil t)) RET

and type "foo RET" at the prompt, I get nil as the result, as
expected.

> The manual merely says that either a STRING (which one? Uni- or multi-?)
> or a Lisp object is returned.

No, it says this:

     This function is the most general way to get input from the
     minibuffer.  By default, it accepts arbitrary text and returns it
     as a string; however, if READ is non-‘nil’, then it uses ‘read’ to
     convert the text into a Lisp object (*note Input Functions::).
     [...]
     If the argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-‘nil’, then the
     minibuffer inherits the current input method (*note Input
     Methods::) and the setting of ‘enable-multibyte-characters’ (*note
     Text Representations::) from whichever buffer was current before
     entering the minibuffer.

So if the return value is a string, its multi-byteness is according to
the value of enable-multibyte-characters of the minibuffer.

> By the way, a multibyte string was really what I wanted out of this. I
> just want to be sure that this behavior is not accidental.

Why do you care, may I ask?