ascii character - removing chars from string

[bruce]

hi...

i'm running into a problem where i'm seeing non-ascii chars in the parsing
i'm doing. in looking through various docs, i can't find functions to
remove/restrict strings to valid ascii chars.

i'm assuming python has something like

valid_str = strip(invalid_str)

where 'strip' removes/strips out the invalid chars...

any ideas/thoughts/pointers...

thanks

-bruce