Remove Special Characters
Clean pasted text down to letters and digits, letters and spaces, printable characters only, or your own keep pattern; the removed count is reported.
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About Remove Special Characters
The cleaner walks the text one character at a time and keeps whatever belongs to the class you choose. Letters follow the Unicode definition, so accented letters from any language stay letters, and emoji stay symbols.
The custom class tests your own regular expression against each single character, which covers one-off needs like keeping only hex digits or only the printable half of a broken paste.
The removed and kept counts are done per Unicode character, so one accented letter or one flag emoji counts as a single character regardless of its byte size.
Questions about Remove Special Characters
Are digits kept with the letters class?
No. The letters class keeps letters and spaces; choose the letters-and-digits class, or a custom pattern, to keep digits too.
Does the printable class remove emoji?
No. Emoji are printable symbols, so they survive; that class drops control and invisible formatting characters instead.
What exactly does the custom pattern see?
One character at a time. A pattern like [\p{L}\p{N} ] keeps letters, digits and spaces and removes everything else.
Why do the counts not match my keyboard count?
Counting is per Unicode character, so a combined flag or an accent on its own each count as one character.
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- Two addresses work:
https://useful-utilities.com/remove-special-characters/andremove-special-characters.useful-utilities.com. Copy whichever you prefer.