edit challenge - get rid of unprintables

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting Joe Chasan (Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:49:26 -0400):

> am looking for an edit solution to strip out unprintables (e.g. tab, null,
> newline, and carriage return for the most part) from a data field.
>
> pretty much whatever is not included in CHR or ASCII edits.
>
> i'm sure mid can handle character by character, but an easier, one-step
> edit solution is escaping me right now.
>
> ideas?

I don't believe an edit can do this.  For example, you cannot imbed a
newline inside the edit, so there is no way to say "delete a newline".

However, you can use XLATE() to poof them out of existence.  Store a
list of the "unprintables" in a variable, and xlate() them to nothing.

     newvalue = xlate(oldvalue,ListOfUnprintables,"")

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