Best way to search files for non-printable characters?

jvander · #1 (**permalink**) 03-30-2005

I need to check ftp'd incoming files for characters that are not alphanumeric,<tab>, <cr>, or <lf> characters. Each file would have 10-20,000 line with up to 3,000 characters per line. Should I use awk, sed, or grep and what would the command look like to do such a search? Thanks much to anyone who could point me in the right direction.

encrypted · #2 (**permalink**) 03-30-2005

For dispalying non printable characters
cat -v -e -t <your_file>

For converting dos formatted text to unix format
dos2unix <your_file>

Ygor · #3 (**permalink**) 03-31-2005

Perhaps consider using tr...

Code:

tr -d '[[:alnum:]\t\n\r]' < infile > outfile
[[ -s outfile ]] && echo invalid

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