I wrote a script to change non-printable characters to spaces:
(The pattern is intended to represent, from left to right:
-The ASCII range containing letters, digits, and punctuation,
-newlines, (Windows: CR-LF)
-newpage
-horizontal tab
)

$ifn=$ARGV[0];$ofn=$ARGV[1];
open IFN, "$ifn" or die "Can't open $ifn:$!\n";
open OFN, ">$ofn" or die "Can't open $ofn:$!\n";

while(<IFN>){
$_ =~ s/[^\x20-\x7e\x0d\x0a\x0c\x09]/ /g;
print OFN;
};
[download]

A problem arose when 0x1A occured in the file: The output file ended on the preceding character!

The name of this character is "substitute", but the control character is ^Z (the EOF marker, I believe. Forgive me, I have to use Windows NT.) My suspicion is that, upon reading this character, <> assumes EOF and leaves the loop.

Is there a way to read past this character safely? What could I do?