How does “cut and paste” affect character encoding and what can go wrong?

Question

I have a document A in encoding A displayed in tool A and a document B in encoding B displayed in tool B. If I cut and paste (part of) B into A what might be the resultant c

Answer 1

This is a very good question. When you copy/paste, exactly what is copied/pasted - CHARACTERS or BYTES?. And if BYTES, what encoding are they in?

From the answers, it sounds like the answer is "it depends". Different programs will put different things in the clipboard, sometimes placing multiple representations.

Then the pasting program needs to pick the best one and "do the right thing" with it.