remove special characters ^@ in ksh script

[alexvai]

Hi,

I have special character ^@ at my ksh script.
It is running on HP-UX,SunOs,AIX but on Linux it is failing.

The script is :

> cat -v test.ksh 
#! /bin/ksh
echo ^@test^@

When i running it , i get the following error:

> ./test.ksh 
./test.ksh: syntax error at line 2: `zero byte' unexpected

What is this character and how can i remove it (may be by sed).

Thanks a lot

[sandeep t]

You can remove it using sed like this:

cat test.ksh | sed 's/^@//g' > test2.ksh
mv test2.ksh test.ksh

[alexvai]

^@ it is not 2 characters, it 's one special character like ^M.

i already found the answer:

^@ in ascii (Hexadecimal ) it's 00

so the solutin is

sed 's/\x00//g' file

Thanks.

[burschik]

You can remove it using sed like this:

cat test.ksh | sed 's/^@//g' > test2.ksh
mv test2.ksh test.ksh

That can't work, since "/^@/" means "@" at the beginning of a line.

[wje_lf]

That can't work, since "/^@/" means "@" at the beginning of a line.

burschik is correct from two angles:

1. He knows his stuff, and (no surprise) his stuff here is correct.
2. Just for fun, I tried it, and he's right.

And with:

sed 's/\x00//g' file

alexvai is correct; I tried that one, too.

But sandeep t is almost there as well. This will work:

cat test.ksh | sed 's/\c@//g' > test2.ksh

but this is better:

sed 's/\c@//g' test.ksh > test2.ksh

You can find additional information on "useless uses of cat" here.