Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 00:27:03 +0000 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cleaning a text file Message-ID: <19990216002703.A337@localhost> In-Reply-To: <19990216103740.60271@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 10:37:40AM %2B1100 References: <19990215201056.19929@welearn.com.au> <Pine.BSF.3.91.990215010943.20451F-100000@dsinw.com> <19990216095232.J2207@lemis.com> <19990216103740.60271@welearn.com.au>
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On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 10:37:40AM +1100, Sue Blake wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 09:52:32AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote:
> > On Monday, 15 February 1999 at 1:10:36 -0800, rick hamell wrote:
> > >
> > >> Also, this file has some very long lines which would get truncated
> > >> or unexpectedly wrapped when sent as email. And if there is something
> > >> strange, I have to read it and guess what it should have been.
> > >>
> > >> Maybe someone will come up with something for this particular case.
> > >> I can't believe there's not some little untility for this that's been
> > >> hanging around unloved for years.
> > >
> > > Oy! Ok... how does Greg reformat all those emails?
> >
> > With Emacs. I have a collection of macros which I'm constantly
> > changing to catch up with new tricks that mailers discover.
> >
> > To Sue's original question: it depends on what your text looks like.
> > tr(1) will remove characters if you ask it to.
>
> If I knew which characters were there (so I could ask tr to remove
> them) I would have already removed them with my text editor.
>
> > fmt(1) might be useful for wrapping lines.
>
> I don't see the long line lengths as a big problem at this stage, but
> fmt might be useful later.
>
> The problem is that I don't know which funny characters exist in the
> file, if any. I want to find out what they are, so I can search for
> them and eyeball them before killing them.
>
>
> Just knowing which characters they are would give me many solutions
> immediately. There still doesn't seem to be a way to find this out :-(
>
First you need to identify the offending characters. Use od(1) or
hexdump(1) to identify them and then work out a filter.
Are they all extended ASCII (>127) chars? or are some of them
control (<32) chars?. You could possibly use awk(1) as a filter,
or write a simple C prog using issprint() and isspace().
HTH
> Maybe there's a long way... somehow put a linefeed after each character
> in the file (with sed?) and then sort it and look at the top and bottom
> of the sorted file.
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> -*Sue*-
>
>
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--
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_______________________________________________________________
Mark Ovens, CNC Apps Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd. Bath UK
CAD/CAM solutions for Sheetmetal Working Industry
mailto:marko@uk.radan.com http://www.radan.com
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