Gents,

I am incredibility thankful for all of the approaches you're providing. I'm going to have a quick go with the benefit of your suggestions and will attempt to come back with a consolidated appreciation.

---------- Post updated at 09:31 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:18 AM ----------

Attempted to run this with the following results:

Code:

[lmoon@oc4562845586 tools]$ sed -e s/\\0223/" /g SP800-53a_HOLD1 > SP800-53a_HOLD1a
> 
> ^C
[lmoon@oc4562845586 tools]$

It put me into an interactive mode (for which I knew not what to enter, so I Ctrl Ced out).

---------- Post updated at 09:32 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:31 AM ----------

Oh the windows program these where generated with was ultra edit

---------- Post updated at 09:55 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:32 AM ----------

methyl,

Please find below answers to your questions:

Code:

$ uname -r
2.6.32-220.4.2.el6.x86_64

$ ls -al | grep SP800-53a_HOLD
-rwxrwxrwx.  1 lmoon lmoon   404089 Mar 12 15:51 SP800-53a_HOLD1
-rwxrwxrwx.  1 lmoon lmoon   395269 Jan  5 15:25 SP800-53a_HOLD1.bak

$ echo $BASH_VERSION
4.1.2(1)-release

Interesting that the sed command you sent earlier (that I ^C ed out of) did generate another file with a small delta in size. I did review it and found the target characters to still be there. Still it looks as though something was replaced.

I'm happy to send you the offending document if you're interested. There is no sensitive information in it.

Thanking You,

Larry

---------- Post updated at 09:59 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:55 AM ----------

Oh,

I'm not able to discern the octal code for those characters. Mind you the ascii table I looked at only had 128 characters with the highest octal code being '177'.

---------- Post updated at 10:04 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:59 AM ----------

dubdubdub dot asciitable dot com Not allowed to post URLs until I've engaged five posts In good faith, I'll get there.