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Date:      Tue, 16 Feb 1999 00:27:03 +0000
From:      Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com>
To:        Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: cleaning a text file
Message-ID:  <19990216002703.A337@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <19990216103740.60271@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 10:37:40AM %2B1100
References:  <19990215201056.19929@welearn.com.au> <Pine.BSF.3.91.990215010943.20451F-100000@dsinw.com> <19990216095232.J2207@lemis.com> <19990216103740.60271@welearn.com.au>

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On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 10:37:40AM +1100, Sue Blake wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 09:52:32AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote:
> > On Monday, 15 February 1999 at  1:10:36 -0800, rick hamell wrote:
> > >
> > >> Also, this file has some very long lines which would get truncated
> > >> or unexpectedly wrapped when sent as email. And if there is something
> > >> strange, I have to read it and guess what it should have been.
> > >>
> > >> Maybe someone will come up with something for this particular case.
> > >> I can't believe there's not some little untility for this that's been
> > >> hanging around unloved for years.
> > >
> > > 	Oy! Ok... how does Greg reformat all those emails?
> > 
> > With Emacs.  I have a collection of macros which I'm constantly
> > changing to catch up with new tricks that mailers discover.
> > 
> > To Sue's original question: it depends on what your text looks like.
> > tr(1) will remove characters if you ask it to.
> 
> If I knew which characters were there (so I could ask tr to remove
> them) I would have already removed them with my text editor.
> 
> >  fmt(1) might be useful for wrapping lines.
> 
> I don't see the long line lengths as a big problem at this stage, but
> fmt might be useful later.
> 
> The problem is that I don't know which funny characters exist in the
> file, if any. I want to find out what they are, so I can search for
> them and eyeball them before killing them.
> 
> 
> Just knowing which characters they are would give me many solutions
> immediately. There still doesn't seem to be a way to find this out :-(
> 

First you need to identify the offending characters. Use od(1) or
hexdump(1) to identify them and then work out a filter.

Are they all extended ASCII (>127) chars? or are some of them
control (<32) chars?. You could possibly use awk(1) as a filter,
or write a simple C prog using issprint() and isspace().

HTH

> Maybe there's a long way... somehow put a linefeed after each character
> in the file (with sed?) and then sort it and look at the top and bottom
> of the sorted file.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Regards,
>         -*Sue*-
> 
> 
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> 

-- 
      FreeBSD - The Power To Serve http://www.freebsd.org
      My Webpage http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~markov
_______________________________________________________________
Mark Ovens, CNC Apps Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd. Bath UK
CAD/CAM solutions for Sheetmetal Working Industry
mailto:marko@uk.radan.com                  http://www.radan.com


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