8.1 Working With Files

8.1.11 strings - find ASCII strings

To search a binary file for printable, ASCII, strings use the strings command. It searches for any sequence of 4 or more ASCII characters terminated by a <newline> or null character. I find this command useful for searching for file names and possible error messages within compiled programs that I don't have source code for.

Syntax

strings [options] file

Common Options

-n number use number as the minimum string length, rather than 4 (SVR4 only)

-number same as above

-t format precede the string with the byte offset from the start of the file, where format is one of: d = decimal, o = octal, x = hexadecimal (SVR4 only)

-o precede the string with the byte offset in decimal (BSD only)

Examples

% strings /bin/cut

SUNW_OST_OSCMD

no delimiter specified

invalid delimiter

b:c:d:f:ns

cut: -n may only be used with -b

cut: -d may only be used with -f

cut: -s may only be used with -f

no list specified

cut: cannot open %s

invalid range specifier

too many ranges specified

ranges must be increasing

invalid character in range

Internal error processing input

invalid multibyte character

unable to allocate enough memory

cut:

usage: cut -b list [-n] [filename ...]

cut -c list [filename ...]

cut -f list [-d delim] [-s] [filename]

Introduction to Unix - 14 AUG 1996

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