recovering plain ASCII text files (without extension)

[vdrachtseq]

My laptop (at the time running Debian) was stolen, and I reobtained it to discover that the HDD had been repartitioned and reformatted and Windows installed over it. Among the important files that were on the drive were some plain ASCII text files with no extension. Is there any way to recover these with PhotoRec? After some experimenting, I'm led to believe they have no common signature to be identified with and therefore cannot be recovered with PhotoRec, but I would like at least a second opinion before I assume this is the case. If they can be recovered with PhotoRec, what would the entry in the signature file look like? If not, can anyone suggest a tool that is capable of this? Be aware that I can recall much of the text content of these files; so perhaps there is a way to match raw ASCII data to a search string? Even then, I'm not sure how the start and end of the file would be detected.

I know this forum isn't for Foremost support, but it seems like the ASCII option of Foremost (as mentioned here) may be what I need. The only information I can find on this is pretty vague. Does anyone have any relevant experience? Many thanks in advance.