man/man1/strings.1

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 Copyright 1989 AT&T
 Copyright (c) 1992, X/Open Company Limited. All Rights Reserved.
 Portions Copyright (c) 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 STRINGS 1 "June 13, 2021"
 NAME
strings - find printable strings in an object or binary file
 SYNOPSIS
strings [-a | -]
 [-t format | -o] [-n number | -number] [-N name] [file]...


 DESCRIPTION
The strings utility 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.

By default, strings looks at program sections that are loaded in memory.
Program sections are identified by the section type SHT_PROGBITS.
Sections that are loaded in memory are identified by the section flag
SHF_ALLOC. Use elfdump(1) to display complete section information
for a file.

All sections can be inspected with the -a option. Individual sections can
be inspected with the -N option.
 OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-a | -

Look everywhere in the file for strings.


-n number | -number

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


-N name

Look only in ELF section name. See elfdump(1). Multiple -N options
can be specified to inspect multiple sections.
If the -a or - option is specified, all -N options are
ignored .


-o

Equivalent to -t d option.


-t format

Write each string preceded by its byte offset from the start of the file. The
format is dependent on the single character used as the format
option-argument:
d

The offset is written in decimal.


o

The offset is written in octal.


x

The offset is written in hexadecimal.


 OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
file

A path name of a regular file to be used as input. If no file operand is
specified, the strings utility reads from the standard input.


 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of strings: LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
 EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0

Successful completion.


>0

An error occurred.


 ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:


ATTRIBUTE TYPE ATTRIBUTE VALUE
CSI Enabled
Interface Stability See below.


The strings utility, including all options except -N, are specified
by standards. See standards(5). The -N option is not currently
specified by any standard.
 SEE ALSO
elfdump(1), od(1), attributes(5), environ(5),
standards(5)
 NOTES
The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive.

For backwards compatibility, the options -a and - are
interchangeable.