able to remove \240 from a text file

pbrowne · #1 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

I have a file originally provided from a SQL database on a Windows platform.

I transfer the file via ftp in binary format, remove the ^M's from the end of all lines.

I have attempted to use tr ( cat infile | tr -d '\240' ) and sed (cat infile | sed 's/\240//g' ) to remove the occurences of \240 in the file with no luck.

I have no problem removing this octal character in vi.

If i run the Windows command, 'type infile', \240 shows up as an a with a grave over it.

In notepad, it shows up as a space.

I need to incorporate into a script a method of deleting these octal characters because other unix commands fail w/ the following error:

can't read STDIN: Illegal byte sequence

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thx in advance,

pat

System Shock · #2 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

Code:

 sed 's/\\240//g' file

pbrowne · #3 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

tried this - it did not find and replace the \240

there was no change after running this command

pat

Christoph Spohr · #4 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

Hi,

try

Code:

sed 's/\o240//g' file

HTH Chris

System Shock · #5 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbrowne

tried this - it did not find and replace the \240

there was no change after running this command

pat

What do you mean "there was no change"? No change in the output or no change in the file? The sed command doesn't edit the file,m just display changes to standard output. You need to redirect the output to another file, or of you have gsed, I believe there is a -e flag that will actually edit the file.

Code:

# cat file
 hello \240 world \240hello\240world

# sed 's/\\240//g' file
 hello  world helloworld
#

pbrowne · #6 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

tried

sed 's/\o240//g' file

no luck - didn't know if this was o240 or 0240 so i tried both to no avail

thx

pat

pbrowne · #7 (**permalink**) 12-19-2008

system shock,

i ran your command and redirected the output to another file:

sed 's/\\240//g' file > output_file

the output_file still has the \240 characters in it.

sorry to be vague.

pat

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