How to remove CTRL-A characters from file using SED?

Question

I want to remove all \"^A\" control characters from a file using SED. I can remove all control characters using \'sed s/[[:cntrl:]]//g\' but how can I specify \"^A\" specif

Answer 1

^A is byte 1 or \x01 so you should be able to do this:

sed 's/\x01//g'

Keep in mind that for single-byte changes, "tr" is faster than sed, although you'll have to use bash's $'..' syntax to give it a 0x01 byte:

tr -d $'\x01'

Answer 2

to reproduce "^A" simply press Ctrl-v Ctrl-a this will reproduce the ^A in the file

sed -i -e 's/^A/BLAH/g' testfile

the ^A in that line is the result of me pressing Ctrl-v Ctrl-a