Re: ascii problem

[duff]

If on unix, cat filename | col -b should do the trick.

Unless, of course, it's actually the two characters ^ and H.

[crashtest]

Unless, of course, it's actually the two characters ^ and H.

... in which case -- staying with an all-UNIX solution -- you could convert the two characters ^ and H to the control-character ^H first ¹:

cat filename | sed 's!\^H!\x08!g' | col -b

¹ inserting non-ascii like \x08 might not work for all versions of sed