Re: [Groff] Vim/formatting question (WordPerfect files)

[Nick Stoughton]

Try using tr ... The character '^@' is a null byte (for tr, this is
'\000'). You can strip out all control chars by:

tr -d '[:cntrl:]' < xxx.wpd > xxx.txt

(or, in vim:   gg!Gtr -d '[:cntrl:]')

This won't strip out chars with the top bit set, but read the man page!

On Tue, 2007-03-13 at 15:15 -0600, Clarke Echols wrote:
> This is only partly on/off topic, but I need help with a messy
> little problem.
> 
> I have been asked to evaluate a book project with the possibility
> that I will be producing it for publication.  The author sent me
> a WordPerfect file (.wpd suffix) that my Microsoft stuff won't read.
> Like Word, it's a binary file that has the text embedded in it.
> 
> Words are separated by a single character that displays in vim as
> a (blue) couple of characters: ( ~@ ) and there are other characters
> showing up as ( ^U, ^^, ^@, ) etc.    I know how to do regular
> expression search and replace for control characters like ^U, but
> this ~@ stuff is something I don't know how to specify in a search
> string.
> 
> Any clues?  Or an easy way to convert this to plain text without
> buying a bunch of software?
> 
> I'm a vim/groff bigot and don't like canned "authoring" software--
> especially if I have to pay for it. :-)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Clarke
> 
>