Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

How do I get rid of hidden characters like †in text file ?

(1/3) > >>

patteo:
I have clipped some text of a webpage and it appears to contain just text.

However, when I examine it with different utilities like AptEdit or Metapad, I notice that there are hidden characters like â€.

When I load the file into Windows Notepad, I cannot see them.

They are probably some hidden control codes.

Does anyone know of any utility that I can run the file through that will clean it of such hidden characters.

It would be nice if the utility accepts commandline commands as well so I need not open the file and can run it as a batch file as well.

40hz:
Grab a copy of PureText and have at it:

Link: http://www.download.com/PureText/3000-2384_4-10069166.html

Publisher's description of PureText
From Steve Miller:

Have you ever copied some text from a web page or a document and then wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key (default is WINDOWS+V) that allows you to paste unformatted text to any application.

Version 2.0 adds Vista support, a new default hot key combo, optional sound, and various other visual enhancements and bug fixes.
--- End quote ---

 :Thmbsup:

PhilB66:
PureText is a wonderful little tool. The home page is @ http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/. Skrommel's PlainPaste and Copy Plain Text (a firefox addon) are good alternatives.

f0dder:
Hidden characters?

I'm guessing at UTF-8 encoding. Processing the documents in an editor/tool that doesn't know about non-ascii character encoding will risk ruining the documents.

40hz:
Hidden characters?

I'm guessing at UTF-8 encoding. Processing the documents in an editor/tool that doesn't know about non-ascii character encoding will risk ruining the documents.
-f0dder (January 03, 2009, 11:51 AM)
--- End quote ---

I believe the latest iteration of PureText supports Unicode under Windows.

PureText is a wonderful little tool. The home page is @ http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/. Skrommel's PlainPaste and Copy Plain Text (a firefox addon) are good alternatives.
-PhilB66 (January 03, 2009, 11:25 AM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for posting the direct link on the Steve Miller homepage . 

:Thmbsup: I opted to post download.com because I kept timing-out every time I tried to go to stevemiller.net.  Seems to be working ok now...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page