Read from txt and clean \x00

Question

I have a .txt with this format:

I can remove the NUL characters in Notepad++ like this:

So I read about it, and I found the solution to replace the regular expresion "\x00" for " " ... but I need to create a VBScript. I found examples like this one:

sPath = "C:\Users\AL\T_1538_89945.txt"
sContent = ReadTextFile(sPath, 0) ' lFormat -2 - System default, -1 - Unicode, 0 - ASCII
sContent = Replace(sContent, "\x00", " ")
WriteTextFile sContent, sPath, 0

Function ReadTextFile(sPath, lFormat)
    With CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").OpenTextFile(sPath, 1, False, lFormat)
        ReadTextFile = ""
        If Not .AtEndOfStream Then ReadTextFile = .ReadAll
        .Close
    End With
End Function

Sub WriteTextFile(sContent, sPath, lFormat)
    With CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").OpenTextFile(sPath, 2, True, lFormat)
        .Write sContent
        .Close
    End With
End Sub

But it doesn't work, can someone adapt the code so it can run it from that location cleaning those regular expressions?

Can you debug and check what is the value of sContent after reading the file? I suspect your file is UTF encoded and hence FSO isn't dealing with it correctly. — Pankaj Jaju, May 09 '18 at 11:54
You are using Notepad++ so you should be able to tell the encoding just by looking at the bottom right corner — Pankaj Jaju, May 09 '18 at 12:40
There are many similar questions here on SO. Check this out --> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13851473/read-utf-8-text-file-in-vbscript — Pankaj Jaju, May 09 '18 at 13:18
@PankajJaju So i have to use ADO to read the file, but that will allow me to replace those 'NUL' ?? — Axel Vazquez, May 09 '18 at 13:22
Ahh yes missed that bit. Actually now that I thought about it I think you just need to make one simple change. Answer below — Pankaj Jaju, May 09 '18 at 13:31

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 09 '18 at 13:34

Replace this line sContent = Replace(sContent, "\x00", " ")

To this sContent = Replace(sContent, ChrW(0), " ")

You were trying to replace a string "\x00" and not the actual NULL char. I used ChrW() to replace that particular char with space. Null is represented by character 0 and hence now we are not replacing a string but NULL char.

Read from txt and clean \x00

1 Answers1