SELECT ... SUBSTR ( REPLACE ( REPLACE ( memo_system_txt, CHR(10), '' ), CHR(13), '' ), 1, 255 ) AS memo_sys_txt, ... #### #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; open F, "memo.txt"; open X, ">memo.txt_error"; my $row; my $line; $row = 0; while () { chomp; $line = $_; $row++; # Look for any lines of the wrong length # if ( length $line != 2340 ) # { # printf X "%u : ||%s||\n", $row, $line; # } # Find any control characters if ( $line =~ /[[:cntrl]]/ ) { my $c = $1; printf X "%u : ||%s||\n", $row, $line; printf X "\t : ||%s||\n", ORD($c); print X "---------------------------"; } } close X; close F;