Question: I am pulling information from a binary file in C and one of my strings is coming out as `\\b\\3777\\375\\v\\177` in GDB. I want to be able to parse this sort of useless data out of my output in a non-specific way - I.e anything that doesn't start with a number/character should be kicked out. How can this be achieved?

The data is being buffered into a struct n bytes at a time, and I am sure that this information is correct based on how data later in the file is being read correctly.

Answer: 
```

if( isalnum( buf[ 0 ]) {
    printf( "%s", buf );
}

```
As the vast majority of the ASCII printable characteres are in the range of 0x20 (' ', space) to 0x7E('~', tilde), you can use this test:

```
if( (buf[0] >= 0x20) && ( buf[0] <= 0x7E ) )
{
    printf( "%s", buf );
}

```

this will validate any string starting with any ASCII character.