Answer by Bohemian for What is the correct way to use unicode characters in a python regex

Rather than seek out specific unwanted chars, you could remove everything not wanted:

re.sub('[^\\s!-~]', '', my_str)

This throws away all characters not:

• whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines, etc)
• printable "normal" ascii characters (! is the first printable char and ~ is the last under decimal 128)

You could include more chars if needed - just adjust the character class.