A method of decoding possibly mutilated codewords (r) of a code (C) into information words (m') including information symbols (m'1, m'2, . . . , m'k), the information words (m) being encoded into codewords (c) of the code (C). In order not to considerably deviate from the standard method and apparatus for decoding a standard Reed-Solomon code, a method of decoding is proposed including decoding the possibly mutilated codewords (r) into codewords (r'), reconstructing information symbols (m'1, m'2, . . . , m'k) from the codewords (r'), comparing the reconstruct information symbols (m'1, m'2, . . . , m'k) with information symbols (m1) known a priori before decoding, and verifying decoding errors based on the result of the comparison.
