NAME

strings − find the printable strings in a object, or other binary, file

SYNOPSIS

strings [ − | −a ] [ −o ] [ −k ] [ −number ] file ... 

DESCRIPTION

Strings looks for ascii strings in a binary file.  A string is any sequence of 4 or more bytes of printing characters. 

− or −a
Unless this flag is given, strings only looks in the initialized data space of object files. 

−o Each string is preceded by its offset in the file (in decimal). 

−k Strings finds the strings of multiple languages including Japanese. 

−number
number is used as the minimum string byte-length rather than 4. 

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

SEE ALSO

od(1)

BUGS

The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive. 

NEWS-OSRelease 4.1C