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

Question

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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters

   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
   

Solution

[^\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

Comments

[Toto]

[^\x00-\x7F]+ works fine for me in Notepad++, it gives the expected result. What is your version of Npp (here, I have 7.5.1)? Did you check Regular expression?

[Seth]

Characters that are part of regular expressions (like [,],(,),#,^) need to be escaped. In Notepad++ you usually do this by prefixing them by a backslash. So [^a-z0-9``~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:'"<>,./?] would become [\^a-z0-9``~!@\#\$%^&*\(\)-_=+\[\]{}\|;:'"<>,./?] (at east).

[Toto]

@Seth: The caret ^ in first position of the character class means a negation, if you escape it, it means ... a caret also parenthesis, pipe and other characters don't need to be escape but the dash - must be escaped as it means a range of characters.

[Seth]

@Toto Good point about the leading caret but you need to escape the others if you want to match them literally. This might be special for Notepad++ but with the above "simple example" it doesn't work if you don't escape them.

[DeathRival]

i use only windows 7 and i have no option to use another windows only windows 2012 that i can use as well

[chloesoe]

Ok, then unfortunately I can't help you. If you have physical access to your Computer and you have the possibility to change the boot order, then you could create a USB stick with a live Ubuntu and run that commands with that; see that tutorial tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/…

[DeathRival]

Toto Thanks so Much you always give a good answer and helpful and match what the question talk about thanks and btw i know [^\x00-\x7F] is work fine but not with every single special characters but the first code u did helped me out to keep only what i want thanks so much helpful

[DeathRival]

thanks for your trying help but i said in my question that the code [^\x00-\x7F] don't remove everything that i need because there unknown special characters this code don't read it anyway Toto helped me out thanks for ur trying

[miroxlav]

@DeathRival – no problem, for me, all the above steps worked 100%, turning sample #2 into #3. Of course, you can use what you did in accepted answer, but this one is faster and more effective. (I bet you did not try the steps above :)

[Gabriel Devillers]

Related: stackoverflow.com/questions/11577720/…