dos2unix didn't remove them cat xx > xxx didn't remove them strings does remove them Thanks Gerry. I knew there had to be an easier way. Does the flavor of linux you have offer dos2unix and unix2dos commands? On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Wakefield, Thad M. <twakefield at stcloudstate.edu<mailto:twakefield at stcloudstate.edu>> wrote: The file written by script during a router session contains backspaces. For example: $cat -A xx AC6509#sho proc cpu | e 0.0.^H ^H0^M$ AC6509#sho te h^H ^H^H ^Hch^M$ In order to share the file with Windows users, the backspaces need to be removed. The file should be a WYSIWYG of cat: $cat xx AC6509#sho proc cpu | e 0.00 AC6509#sho tech Web searches and experimenting with various command options and pipes didn't solve the problem. I wrote the following to remove the backspaces: #!/bin/bash while : do if ( egrep -m1 ^H xx > /dev/null ) then sed -i 's/.^H//' xx else exit fi done sed -i 's/^M//' xx Is there an easier solution using Linux commands? Thad _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org<mailto:tclug-list at mn-linux.org> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20080403/a0021315/attachment.htm