NAME

strings − find printable strings in an object or binary file

SYNOPSIS

strings [ −a ] [ −o ] [ −number ] [ 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. 

OPTIONS

−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. 

−number Use a number as the minimum string length rather than the default, which is 4. 

ENVIRONMENT

LC_CTYPE determines how strings handles characters. When LC_CTYPE is set to a valid value, strings can display and handle text and filenames containing valid characters for that locale.  strings can display and handle Extended Unix Code (EUC) characters where any character can be 1, 2, or 3 bytes wide.  strings can also handle EUC characters of 1, 2, or more column widths. In the "C" locale, only characters from ISO 8859-1 are valid. 

SEE ALSO

od(1)

NOTES

The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive. 

For backwards compatibility, the options −a or just the - are interchangeable. 

Sun Microsystems  —  Last change: 22 Jan 1993