<div>
If you don't want the new line character, remove \n on line 6. 

<pre><code class="code-10 nolinks" id="code-124844">&lt;html&gt;
&lt;script&gt;
 var input = 
 &quot;1...5...10...15...20...&quot; + &quot;\n&quot; +
 &quot;Hello, Bill?&lt;A&gt;3%($$)&quot;;
 var output = input.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9&amp;!#$%@_\-\.\n]/g, &quot; &quot;);
 alert(output);
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;body&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
</code></pre>
</div>

<div>
In PHP: 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-124898">&lt;?php
$input=file_get_contents('file.txt');
$output=preg_replace('/[^\w&amp;!#$%@.\r\n-]/',' ',$input);
echo $output;
?&gt;
 
Note that your replacement will not work as well on non-.txt files (.DOC etc.) to remove &quot;junk&quot; since different replacement rules need to be used on those files to remove the large amount of formatting blocks in those files. Save your text sample in MS Word as file.doc and repeat the proposed operation on that file and you will see an example.
</code></pre>
</div>

<div>
For the proposed character set replacement you could also further shorten that to: 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-124899">$output=preg_replace('/[^\w!#-&amp;@.\r\n-]/',' ',$input);
 
As well, since you are replacing the unwanted characters with space characters (viewed as [\x20] or [ ] within character set) you might consider including the space character in the character set so that you don't waste resources replacing spaces with spaces:
 
$output=preg_replace('/[^\w !#-&amp;@.\r\n-]/',' ',$input);
</code></pre>
</div>

<div>
Hi, Colleagues, and thanks for your suggestions. &nbsp;I will start testing this AM (US EDT). &nbsp;To clarify... 
 
@Lolly-Ink: Thanks for the JS, but my app needs to do this on the server in PHP. 
 
@ddrudik: to your comment &quot;replacement will not work as well on non-.txt files&quot; - that is exactly the issue I am trying to resolve -- it has to deal with non-txt files that contain some pieces of readable text! &nbsp; 
 
I have no control over the content and format of the files - callers across the country might be sending almost anything. &nbsp;Of course, I would LOVE to get clear text, but that simply isn't an option. 
 
In the code snippet I've posted a character-by-character iteration that achieves the objective. &nbsp;It is too slow, but it works on small files. 
 
What I've discovered in Alpha-test is that some foreign files that may be huge (+2MB) such as Word.doc files with an embedded picture (feh) or MSFT Publisher files. &nbsp;So I need greater efficiency in order to run without running out of time on the server! 
 
In some programming languages, you might be able to set up a translation table that contains 256 bytes. &nbsp;All the &quot;desirable&quot; character positions contain the hex (or octal) representations of themselves. &nbsp;All the undesirable character positions contain a blank. &nbsp;Then you can use each character's numeric value as an index into the table to retrieve the replacement character. &nbsp;In an assembler-type language this would run very fast. &nbsp;But I don't know how to achieve that sort of byte-wise indexed replacement in PHP. 
 
Hope that clarifies the need. &nbsp;Thanks, ~Ray 

<pre><code class="code-10 nolinks" id="code-124933">// GET THE RAW INPUT FILE
$raw_data = file_get_contents('/* combination binary + text file*/');
 
// SAVE CONVERTED DATA FIELD HERE
$my_data = '';
 
// ITERATE CHARACTER-BY-CHARACTER UNTIL ALL RAW DATA IS EATEN
while (!empty($raw_data)) {
	$character	= substr($raw_data,0,1);
	$raw_data	= substr($raw_data,1);
	
// IF NOT 'READABLE' CONVERT THIS CHARACTER TO A BLANK
	$my_data	.= ereg_replace('[^a-zA-Z0-9&amp;!#$%@_\.\-]', ' ', $character);
	
} // ! WHILE 
 
// DECLOP ALL MULTIPLE BLANKS
$my_data	= trim(ereg_replace(' +', ' ', $my_data));
</code></pre>
</div>

<div>
Ray_Paseur, possibly you might have misinterpreted my comment, certainly the replace code I provided will remove the characters other than in your defined set, but that still leaves you with a file with spaces throughout with some intermittent text that may or may not be your target. &nbsp;To parse documents for text you either need a parser designed for the purpose or you need to be able to recognize what application created the file you are presented and then have matching rules defined for that application. &nbsp;Provide a file of a certain size for testing and I will test with my code and show you the result.
</div>

<div>
@ddrudik, Feel free to have a shot at this file. &nbsp;It happens to be a word document with some email addresses in it, but I want to process it as a string, without knowledge of its internal format or program of origin. &nbsp;As I said, I will have all sorts of weird file types that need to be processed this way. 
 
Also, I'm not so much interested in parsing the text as I am in just eliminating the unwanted characters, on a byte-by-byte basis. &nbsp;I know there will be a lot of random noise in the output, and that's OK. &nbsp;The objective of my programming is not to produce finished intelligence, just to produce a document that can be eyeballed for certain information, and possibly printed or cut-and-paste in case something of interest is detected. 
 
Thanks for your help, ~Ray 
<a href="https://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2008/07_w30/44291/Doc4.doc" target="_blank" class="file-inline" title="A Word file to be teated like it is one long data string. (23 KB)"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M67.508 468.467c-58.005-58.013-58.016-151.92 0-209.943l225.011-225.04c44.643-44.645 117.279-44.645 161.92 0 44.743 44.749 44.753 117.186 0 161.944l-189.465 189.49c-31.41 31.413-82.518 31.412-113.926.001-31.479-31.482-31.49-82.453 0-113.944L311.51 110.491c4.687-4.687 12.286-4.687 16.972 0l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.685 12.283 0 16.969L184.983 304.917c-12.724 12.724-12.73 33.328 0 46.058 12.696 12.697 33.356 12.699 46.054-.001l189.465-189.489c25.987-25.989 25.994-68.06.001-94.056-25.931-25.934-68.119-25.932-94.049 0l-225.01 225.039c-39.249 39.252-39.258 102.795-.001 142.057 39.285 39.29 102.885 39.287 142.162-.028A739446.174 739446.174 0 0 1 439.497 238.49c4.686-4.687 12.282-4.684 16.969.004l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.689 12.279.004 16.965a755654.128 755654.128 0 0 0-195.881 195.996c-58.034 58.092-152.004 58.093-210.048.041z"/></svg>Doc4.doc</a>
</div>

A Word file to be teated like it is one long data string.

Doc4.doc

Doc4.doc.txt

<div>
Perfect. &nbsp;You've made my day with a preg! &nbsp;Thanks very much, ~Ray
</div>

<div>
Glad I could help. &nbsp;Thanks for the question and the points.
</div>

<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I have a PHP script that processes a long data string. &nbsp;The string is read into my script via file_get_contents() from a Word, Powerpoint, Excel, flat text file, etc. &nbsp;So some of the string is legible clear text and some of it is not so useful binary stuff like CR and LF, and application dependent binary values and just noise, for my purposes. 
 
I want an efficient way to eliminate all the characters EXCEPT these listed below, by translating the non-listed characters into blanks. 
 
Characters I want to KEEP include a-z A-Z 0-9 &amp;!#$%@_ as well as the dot (period) and dash (minus). &nbsp;Everything else should be converted into a blank. 
 
I'm not worried about multibyte or UTF-16 or anything like that - the ASCII character set, considered as if one byte at a time, will do just fine. 
 
Sample input and output are in the code snippet. &nbsp;Anybody got a high-performance solution to help translate this stuff? 
 
Many thanks, ~Ray 

<pre><code class="code-1 nolinks" id="code-124823">Input
1...5...10...15...20...
Hello, Bill?&lt;A&gt;3%($$)
 
Output
1...5...10...15...20...
Hello Bill A 3% $$
</code></pre>
</div>
</div>

I have a PHP script that processes a long data string.  The string is read into my script via file_get_contents() from a Word, Powerpoint, Excel, flat text file, etc.  So some of the string is legible clear text and some of it is not so useful binary stuff like CR and LF, and application dependent binary values and just noise, for my purposes.

I want an efficient way to eliminate all the characters EXCEPT these listed below, by translating the non-listed characters into blanks.

Characters I want to KEEP include a-z A-Z 0-9 &!#$%@_ as well as the dot (period) and dash (minus).  Everything else should be converted into a blank.

I'm not worried about multibyte or UTF-16 or anything like that - the ASCII character set, considered as if one byte at a time, will do just fine.

Sample input and output are in the code snippet.  Anybody got a high-performance solution to help translate this stuff?

Many thanks, ~Ray

Eliminate unprintable characters from mixed character/binary string

PHP is a widely-used server-side scripting language especially suited for web development, powering tens of millions of sites from Facebook to personal WordPress blogs. PHP is often paired with the MySQL relational database, but includes support for most other mainstream databases. By utilizing different Server APIs, PHP can work on many different web servers as a server-side scripting language.

A regular expression ("regex") is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, or string matching, i.e. "find and replace"-like operations. Regular expression processors are found in several search engines, search and replace dialogs of several word processors and text editors, and in the command lines of text processing utilities, such as sed and AWK. Many programming languages provide regular expression capabilities, some built-in, for example Perl, JavaScript, Ruby, AWK, and Tcl, and others via a standard library, for example .NET languages, Java, Python and C++ (since C++11). Most other languages offer regular expressions via a library.