How To Remove All Lines Containing Any non-ASCII Characters Using Notepad++ or Emeditor

How do I remove all lines containing any non-ASCII keyboard characters?

I tried so many times Regular Expressions codes but none work like it should be I even tried this code [^\x00-\x7F]+ but it didn't select all the characters

the idea come on my mind is to use this way [^a-z0-9``~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?] but still not work because some of this characters didn't get deselected like \ / | { } [ ] $ # ^ ( )

1. If a line contains any characters not in the list below, I want to remove remove it or bookmark it

   0123456789`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\/|;:'"<>,.?
   abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
   ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

2. Simple example: There are more characters like this found here:

   0123456789`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?
   abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
   ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
   ¤©ª«¬¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿÷ÆIJŒœƔƕƋƕ
   ƜƝƢƸƾDžNJNjǽǾǼɁɀȾɎʒəɼʰʲʱʴʳʵʶʷʸˁˀˇˆ˟ˠ
   ˩˧Ͱͱͳʹͼͻͺ͵ͿΏΔΘΞΛΣΠΦΧΨΩΪΫάέήίΰαβδε
   θηκλμξπςρφχψωϊϋϏώϑϐϓϒϔϕϖϠϟϞϝϜϡϢ
   ϤϣϧϫϬϮϯϰϱ₠₡₢₣₤₥₦₧₨₩₪₫€₭₮₯₰₱₲
   ₳₴₵₶₷₸₹₺₻₼₽₾₿⅐⅑⅒⅓⅔⅕⅖⅗⅘⅙⅚⅛⅜
   ⅝⅞⅟℠℡™℣ℤ℥Ω℧ℨ℩KÅℬℭ℮ℯ⇀⇁ↀↁↂↃↄ
   ⇔⇕⇖⇗⇘⇙⇚⇛⇜⇝⇞⇟⇠⇡⇢⇣⇤⇥⇦⇧⇨⅀⅁⅂⅃⅄ⅅ
   ⅆⅇⅈⅉ⅊⅋⅌⅍ⅎ⅏ⅱⅲⅳⅴⅵⅶⅷⅸⅹⅺⅻⅼⅽ

3. Expected result:

   0123456789`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?
   abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
   ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

4

3 Answers

[^\x00-\x7F] works fine, but, if you want to use a long character class like [^a-z0-9``~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?] you have to escape characters that have a special meaning (ie. -[]\ and add linebreak \r,\n.

Your regex becomes:

 [^a-z0-9``~!@#$%^&*()\-_=+\[\]{}\\|;:'"<>,./?\r\n] # ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^^^

---

• Ctrl+H
• Find what: [^a-z0-9``~!@#$%^&*()\-_=+\[\]{}\\|;:'"<>,./?\r\n]+$ But, again, [^\x00-\x7F] works fine and is more readable
• Replace with: LEAVE EMPTY
• check Wrap around
• check Regular expression
• Replace all

Result for given example:

0123456789`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

1

If you are agnostic to the solution and not fixed to Notepad++ you could install bash for Win 10, as I showed here (sorry I always come back to your questions with Linux workarounds ;) )

I would have a solution, where you unfortunately also will loose the apostrophe '

1. open bash for Windows over start menu
2. Go to the folder, where your file is located with cd /mnt/c/path/folder (the drive C: is on /mnt/c)

3. If your file is named foo.txt you could generate a file bar.txt with this command:

   cat foo.txt | tr -cd '[:alnum:]\n\r~!@#$%^&*()-_=+{}\|;:<>,./?"`' | sed '/^$/d' > bar.txt

Explanation of the parts:

cat foo.txt outputs the text file and with the pipe | the output is redirected to the commande tr -cd which removes every char, which is not in the list after betwenn '...'. Followed by a pipe tosedto remove the empty lines. Last but not least with> bar.txt` we redirect the output to the file bar.txt

Thanks to:

• for the :alnum: tip
• for the apostrophe explanation

3

In Notepad++ this is easy:

1. menu Search > Mark...

2. Find what: [^\x00-\x7F]
   ☑ Mark line
   (•) Regular expression

3. Press Find All

4. menu Search > Bookmark > Remove bookmarked lines

2

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