The GNU "strings" program should do exactly that. It's installed on all Linux machines I know. Note that it ignores delete characters etc (instead of deleting the previous character), but that's /usually/ not much of a problem.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re^2: Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by Joost
in thread Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by mrslopenk

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