How to enter special characters in a text file using vi?

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1

Hi,

I need to create a test text file with the special characters \342\200\223 in it and to be able to use sed maybe to delete them

I tried doing it using vi by pressing CTRL-V and then typing 342 but it does not work. After pressing CTRL-V and typing 342 it seems to just insert the numbers 342 in it, tried doing CTRL-V and then \342 does not work either.

Eventually, I would want to search and delete all non-printable characters but at the moment, this is what I am wanting to test on as these characters appear intermittently in a file that I am trying to load into the database.

Thanks in advance.

2

Make sure you're using vim, and not vi.

In the file, switch to INSERT mode. Hit CTRL-V and release. Should see a ^ symbol. Type in the numeric value for the character.