strings —
print
the strings of printable characters in files
| strings |
[-a |
--all]
[-e
encoding |
--encoding=encoding]
[-f |
--print-file-name]
[-h |
--help]
[-n
number |
--bytes=number
|
-number]
[-o]
[-t
radix |
--radix=radix]
[-v |
--version]
[file ...] |
For each
file specified, the
strings utility prints contiguous sequences of
printable characters that are at least
n
characters long and are followed by an unprintable character. The default
value of
n is 4. By default, the
strings utility only scans the initialized and
loaded sections of ELF objects; for other file types, the entire file is
scanned. The
strings utility is mainly used for
determining the contents of non-text files.
If no file name is specified as an argument, standard input is read.
The following options are available:
-
-
- -a
|
--all
- For ELF objects, scan the entire file for printable
strings.
-
-
- -e
encoding |
--encoding=encoding
- Select the character encoding to be used while searching
for strings. Valid values for argument
encoding are:
- s
- for single 7-bit-byte characters (ASCII, ISO
8859).
- S
- for single 8-bit-byte characters.
- l
- for 16-bit little-endian.
- b
- for 16-bit big-endian.
- L
- for 32-bit little-endian.
- B
- for 32-bit big-endian.
The default is to assume that characters are encoded using a single 7-bit
byte.
-
-
- -f
|
--print-file-name
- Print the name of the file before each string.
-
-
- -h
|
--help
- Print a usage summary and exit.
-
-
- -n
number |
--bytes=number
| -number
- Print the contiguous character sequence of at least
number characters long, instead of the
default of 4 characters. Argument number
should specify a positive decimal integer.
-
-
- -o
- Equivalent to specifying -t
o.
-
-
- -t
radix |
--radix=radix
- Print the offset from the start of the file before each
string using the specified radix. Valid values for argument
radix are:
- d
- for decimal
- o
- for octal
- x
- for hexadecimal
-
-
- -v
|
--version
- Display a version identifier and exit.
The
strings utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
To display strings in
/bin/ls use:
$ strings /bin/ls
To display strings in all sections of
/bin/ln use:
$ strings -a /bin/ln
To display strings in all sections of
/bin/cat
prefixed with the filename and the offset within the file use:
$ strings -a -f -t x /bin/cat
ar(1),
nm(1),
objdump(1),
ranlib,
readelf(1),
size(1)
The first FreeBSD
strings utility appeared in
FreeBSD v3. It was later discontinued in
FreeBSD v5, when i386-only a.out format was dropped in
favor of ELF.
The
strings utility was re-written by
S.Sam Arun Raj
<
samarunraj@gmail.com>.
This manual page was written by
S.Sam Arun
Raj
<
samarunraj@gmail.com>.