search special characters in a file


 
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# 1  
Old 05-13-2005
search special characters in a file

Hello
I am new to shell scripting and can anyone tell me how to check if there are any special characters in a file. Can i use grep ?
thanks
susie
# 2  
Old 05-13-2005
If you want to actually see the special characters you can tr to change them to visible.

Assume you want to see all non-alphanumeric chars in "myfile"
Code:
tr -c '[A-Z][a-z][0-9]'  '[#*]' < myfile

# 3  
Old 05-13-2005
Hello Jim
Thanks for letting me know about TR.
the o/p has all the non alpha numeric chars seperated by #

eg : sample.ksh contains
this is &*, a test

the o/p for the syntaxt you mentioned is
this#is####a#test

and how do i remove # and print just the text
 
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