Shell Programming and Scripting

To answer the question in the subject line:

Code:

tr -d '`' < FILE

Under what conditions does it fail?

I hope you don't really run the entire file through two instances of sed (not to mention cat) for every line in the file.

You are using three external commands where you only need one:

Code:

data=$( sed -e 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-]//g' -e 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|' file )

Please post the exact message you get. (Cut and paste it, don't retype it.)

Why do you think the problem is the ` character?

The invalid characters are those between the quotes.

As the message says, you are using an invalid format character with printf.

The syntaxt for printf is:

Code:

printf FORMAT_STRING ARG ...

What you need is:

Code:

printf "%s\n" "$line"

Please put code inside code tags.

 
counter=1
while read line
do
  # Test the file 
  printf "$line" > temp$counter
  pref=$(sed <$temp$counter -e 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-]//g' -e 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|')
printf"

Don't use sed for every line in a file; it will be extremely slow.

Use sed on the entire file and work on its output.

Use the standard form for arithmetic:

Code:

counter=$(( $counter + 1 ))

 
done < temp01

data=$( sed -e 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9+_:-]//g' -e 's|.*ex:Msg\(.*\)ex:Msg.*|\1|' file )