strings - find the printable strings in a object, or other binary,
file
strings [ - ] [ -a ] [ -o ] [
-t format ] [ -number ] [ -n
number ] [--] [file ...]
Strings looks for ASCII strings in a binary file or
standard input. Strings is useful for identifying random object files
and many other things. A string is any sequence of 4 (the default) or more
printing characters [ending at, but not including, any other character or
EOF]. Unless the - flag is given, strings looks in all
sections of the object files except the (__TEXT,__text) section. If no files
are specified standard input is read.
The file arguments may be of the form libx.a(foo.o), to
request information about only that object file and not the entire library.
(Typically this argument must be quoted, ``libx.a(foo.o)'', to get it
past the shell.)
The options to strings(1) are:
- -a
- This option causes strings to look for strings in all sections of
the object file (including the (__TEXT,__text) section.
- -
- This option causes strings to look for strings in all bytes of the
files (the default for non-object files).
- --
- This option causes strings to treat all the following arguments as
files.
- -o
- Preceded each string by its offset in the file (in decimal).
- -t format
- Write each string preceded by its byte offset from the start of the file.
The format shall be dependent on the single character used as the format
option-argument:
- d
- The offset shall be written in decimal.
- o
- The offset shall be written in octal.
- x
- The offset shall be written in hexadecimal.
- -number
- The decimal number is used as the minimum string length rather than
the default of 4.
- -n number
- Specify the minimum string length, where the number argument is a positive
decimal integer. The default shall be 4.
- -arch
arch_type
- Specifies the architecture, arch_type, of the file for
strings(1) to operate on when the file is a universal file. (See
arch(3) for the currently know arch_types.) The
arch_type can be "all" to operate on all architectures in
the file.
The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive.