diff --git a/tiktoken-rs/src/vendor_tiktoken.rs b/tiktoken-rs/src/vendor_tiktoken.rs
index fa65695..35dc472 100644
--- a/tiktoken-rs/src/vendor_tiktoken.rs
+++ b/tiktoken-rs/src/vendor_tiktoken.rs
@@ -223,7 +223,10 @@ impl CoreBPE {
         &self.special_regex_tls[hash_current_thread() % MAX_NUM_THREADS]
     }
 
-    fn _decode_native(&self, tokens: &[usize]) -> Vec<u8> {
+    /// Given a list of tokens, return a vector of bytes
+    ///
+    /// The output is NOT guaranteed to be valid UTF-8
+    pub fn _decode_native(&self, tokens: &[usize]) -> Vec<u8> {
         let mut ret = Vec::with_capacity(tokens.len() * 2);
         for token in tokens {
             let token_bytes = self
@@ -235,12 +238,11 @@ impl CoreBPE {
         ret
     }
 
-    #[allow(clippy::needless_lifetimes)] // the iterator captures a lifetime outside of the function
-    fn _decode_native_and_split<'a>(
-        &'a self,
+    pub fn _decode_native_and_split(
+        &self,
         tokens: Vec<usize>,
     ) -> impl Iterator<Item = Vec<u8>> + '_ {
-        tokens.into_iter().map(move |token| {
+        tokens.into_iter().map(|token| {
             let token_bytes = self
                 .decoder
                 .get(&token)
@@ -549,6 +551,9 @@ impl CoreBPE {
     // Decoding
     // ====================
 
+    /// Decode a vector of tokens into a valid UTF-8 String
+    ///
+    /// If unicode validation is not wanted, see _decode_native.
     pub fn decode(&self, tokens: Vec<usize>) -> Result<String> {
         match String::from_utf8(self._decode_native(&tokens)) {
             Ok(text) => Ok(text),