remove <200b> character from text file

I have a huge text file containing this string/character <200b> that I want to delete. I tried with sed but it didn't work.

sed 's/<200b>//g' file

The character never shows when I open the file with a graphic text editor like gedit, I see it with vim.

Solution 1:

<200b> is a Unicode for "Zero Width Space". You won't find it as a string. You can pipe the character into sed like this for removal:

sed -i "s/$(echo -ne '\u200b')//g" file

• sed -i will modify the file in-place.
• $(...) is a Bash command substitution.
• echo manual page:
  • -n do not output the trailing newline
  • -e enable interpretation of backslash escapes

Solution 2:

You can also get rid of this in VIM.

%s/\%u200b// - entire file
%s/\%u200b//g - entire file, more than one occurrence on a line

Solution 3:

I would recommend open this file in any Text editor and do a Find and Replace.

Find: Hold Alt and press 0 1 2 9 (this will input a zero-width character).

Replace: Leave empty.

Choose "Replace all".