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 );
}

```
It sounds a bit like you're reimplementing the linux utility **[strings](http://linux.die.net/man/1/strings)**.

> 
> For each file given, GNU strings
>  prints the printable character
>  sequences that are at least 4
>  characters long (or the number given
>  with the options below) and are
>  followed by an unprintable character.
>  By default, it only prints the strings
>  from the initialized and loaded
>  sections of object files; for other
>  types of files, it prints the strings
>  from the whole file.
> 
> 
>