[PLUG] Identifying character codes in an ASCII text file

[Rich Shepard]

  I downloaded a bunch of data from an agency web site by printing the
information to a disk file. This gave me the .ps version that I converted to
a text file with pstotext.

  On of the data fields is the decimal longitude, a numeric field preceeded
with a dash (because every longitude west of the Prime Meridian is a
negative value). But, in my text file, rather than having just a
dash/negative sign, the character is encased in a white rectangle.
Obviously, it's not a vanilla dash.

  How can I identify the hex code for this character? And, how would I
specify that code in a search-and-replace operation (in joe or emacs, for
example)?

  In the meantime, I'm digging into my awk references to learn how to
specify the beginning and end of alpha strings so they can have double
quotes around them (to make a CSV file).

TIA,

Rich