Thanks much for the help. it does work. 
#!/usr/bin/perl  

use strict;
use warnings;

open F, '<', 'notes.txt_error' or die "Open output file failed: $!";

my $row;
my $line;

$row = 0;
while (<F>)
        {
        chomp;
        $line = $_;
        $row++;
        if ( $line =~ /([[:cntrl:]])/ )
                {
                my $c = $1;
                printf  "%u : ||%s||\n", $row, $line;
                printf  "\t : ||%s||\n", ord ($c);
                print  "---------------------------";

                }
        }

close F;

[download]
produces 
150 : || <long line> ||
         : ||3||
---------------------------
206 : || <long line> ||
         : ||9||
---------------------------
317 : || <long line> ||
         : ||28||
---------------------------
12878 : || <long line> ||
         : ||24||
---------------------------
Now to find out how these odd control characters got into my data. But that is a different story.
Thanks much. Eric

In reply to Re^2: Searching for control characters by ericdp
in thread Searching for control characters by ericdp

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.