check for ascii above 127

Hi all, I'm trying to work with text files that have mixed hard hyphens (ascii decimal 45) and soft hyphens (ascii decimal 255) and I need something that will let me distinguish between the two. hp-ux has a utility called vis that does just what I need-type "vis <filename>" and it returns text with everything above 7 bit ascii encoded as \(decimal number). Is there an equivalent in SUSE? I've looked and can't find anything. Or any other suggestions? Thanks Dave Driscoll