Hi,

  That sounds a bit too complex.  For example, how many non-printable characters should be displayed ?  How many printable characters are needed before the display of non-printable characters is triggered.  Etc.

  The strings command has been recently enhanced however so that it will now display all whitespace characters, including new-lines, if the --include-all-whitespace option is used.  Perhaps this will help you ?

Cheers
  Nick

> That sounds a bit too complex.  For example, how many non-printable characters
> should be displayed ?

All whitespaces from the first printable character until the next printable character but only if there is no binary character in the way (a character that strings would not show).

The idea is that this option would normally show all whitespaces within text files/occurences but no whitespaces within "binary garbage". This would show whitespaces there they are likely to be wanted and suppress whitespaces there they are normally not useful.


> The strings command has been recently enhanced however so that it will
> now display all whitespace characters, including new-lines, if the
> --include-all-whitespace option is used.  Perhaps this will help you ?

This sounds useful too and I will test it if this version is available on my distribution. But what do you think of my idea?

Hi,

> This sounds useful too and I will test it if this version is available on my
> distribution. But what do you think of my idea?

Well it is certainly possible, and I can see how it could be useful in 
some situations.  But unfortunately I do not have time to delve into 
implementing it at the moment.  That should not stop anyone else from 
having a go however, and if you feel like writing a patch I will be 
happy to review it.

Cheers
   Nick