Why isn't my re.sub replacing the contents of my MS Word file?

[scottcabit at gmail.com]

On Tuesday, May 13, 2014 9:49:12 AM UTC-4, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
> You may have missed my follow up post, where I said I had not noticed you 
> were operating on a binary .doc file.
> 
> If you're not willing or able to use a full-blown doc parser, say by 
> controlling Word or LibreOffice, the other alternative is to do something 
> quick and dirty that might work most of the time. Open a doc file, or 
> multiple doc files, in a hex editor and *hopefully* you will be able to 
> see chunks of human-readable text where you can identify how en-dashes 
> and similar are stored.

  I created a .doc file and opened it with UltraEdit in binary (Hex) mode. What I see is that there are two characters, one for ndash and one for mdash, each a single byte long. 0x96 and 0x97.
  So I tried this: fStr = re.sub(b'\0x96',b'-',fStr)

  that did nothing in my file. So I tried this: fStr = re.sub(b'0x97',b'-',fStr)

  which also did nothing.
  So, for fun I also tried to just put these wildcards in my re.findall so I added |Part \0x96|Part \0x97    to no avail.

  Obviously 0x96 and 0x97 are NOT being interpreted in a re.findall or re.sub as hex byte values of 96 and 97 hexadecimal using my current syntax.

  So here's my question...if I want to replace all ndash  or mdash values with regular '-' symbols using re.sub, what is the proper syntax to do so?

  Thanks!