diff --git a/nselib/idna.lua b/nselib/idna.lua
index a9ae69e8b..1d186c7e7 100644
--- a/nselib/idna.lua
+++ b/nselib/idna.lua
@@ -285,8 +285,6 @@ function toASCII(codepoints, transitionalProcessing, checkHyphens, checkBidi, ch
   encoder = encoder or unicode.utf8_enc
   decoder = decoder or unicode.utf8_dec
 
-  local inputString = unicode.encode(codepoints, encoder)
-
   local decoded_tbl, disallowedCodePoints = map(codepoints, useSTD3ASCIIRules, transitionalProcessing)
 
   if decoded_tbl == nil then