remove <200b> character from text file

Question

I have a huge text file containing this string/character <200b> that I want to delete. I tried with sed but it didn't work.

sed 's/<200b>//g' file

The character never shows when I open the file with a graphic text editor like gedit, I see it with vim.

Answer 1

You can also get rid of this in VIM.

%s/\%u200b// - entire file
%s/\%u200b//g - entire file, more than one occurrence on a line

Answer 2

<200b> is a Unicode for "Zero Width Space". You won't find it as a string. You can pipe the character into sed like this for removal:

sed -i "s/$(echo -ne '\u200b')//g" file

• sed -i will modify the file in-place.
• $(...) is a Bash command substitution.
• echo manual page:
  • -n do not output the trailing newline
  • -e enable interpretation of backslash escapes

Answer 3

For anyone using vim and want to remove whole lines with this character, you can use the ex command g

:g/\%u200b/d

Answer 4

I would recommend open this file in any Text editor and do a Find and Replace.

Find: Hold Alt and press 0 1 2 9 (this will input a zero-width character).

Replace: Leave empty.

Choose "Replace all".

Answer 5

Using vi, for all lines (1,$) substitute (s) all zero-width-space instances per line by nothing (//g):

:1,$s/\%u200b//g

Answer 6

A shorter version of the same suggestion:

:%s/\%u200b//g