strings(1)

strings -- find printable strings in an object file or binary

Synopsis

strings [-a] [-o] [-n number |-number] [-t format] filename...

Description

The strings command looks for ASCII strings in a binary file. A string is any sequence of 4 or more printing characters ending with a newline or a null character.

strings is useful for identifying random object files and many other things.

The following options are available:

-a: Look everywhere in the file for strings. If this flag is omitted, strings only looks in the initialized data space of object files.
-o: Precede each string by its offset in the file.
-n number: Use number as the minimum string length rather than 4.
-t format: Precede each string by its byte offset from the start of the file. The byte offset is displayed in the format specified by the single-character format argument: ``d'' for decimal, ``o'' for octal, and ``x'' for hexadecimal.

Options may be delimited by ``--'' where appropriate to avoid ambiguity.

Exit codes

On successful completion strings returns 0. Otherwise a value of >0 is returned.

References

od(1)

Notices

The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive.

For backwards compatibility, -number can be used in place of -n number. Similarly, the -a and a - option are interchangeable. The - and the -number variations are obsolescent and may be removed in a future release.