Control Freak

A simple script to view and remove troublesome ASCII control characters from text files

Why?

ASCII control characters have a habit of breaking things

Usage

ruby control_freak.rb [input file] [options]

OPTIONS:
-q, --quiet                      Suppresses removed character output to the terminal
-o, --output OUTPUT              The full or relative path of the output file
-i, --in-place                   Writes the changes to the file, in place
-d, --dry-run                    Run a dry run of the characters to be deleted
-h, --help                       Show this help text
-v, --version                    Show version

It can currently only be used for text files (passing non-text files gives unexpected results). This includes .txt, .json, and .csv files.

Output files use UTF-8 encoding.

What gets removed?

ASCII characters 0-31 and 127 (aka "Control Characters"), except:

• 9 (horizontal tab, \t)
• 10 (line feed, \n)
• 13 (carriage return, \r)

Sample

ruby control_freak.rb ../lipsum.txt -o ../lipsum_fixed.txt
Line 1, char 223: \u0003
Line 1, char 224: \u0003
Line 1, char 225: \u0003
Line 2, char 1: \u000b
Line 2, char 2: \u000b

To-do

• Fix in-place functionality
• Require input file as script argument
• Add option to retain characters
• Add "Nothing changed" message
• Add support for XLSX/XLSM files

License

MIT License