plan9-strings(1) [debian man page]

STRINGS(1)						      General Commands Manual							STRINGS(1)

NAME

       strings - extract printable strings

SYNOPSIS

       strings [ file ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       Strings	finds  and  prints strings containing 6 or more consecutive printable UTF-encoded characters in a (typically) binary file, default
       standard input.	Printable characters are taken to be ASCII characters from blank through tilde (hexadecimal 20 through 7E), inclusive, and
       all  other  characters from value 00A0 to FFFF.	Strings reports the decimal offset within the file at which the string starts and the text
       of the string. If the string is longer than 70 runes the line is terminated by three dots and the printing is resumed on the next line with
       the offset of the continuation line.

SOURCE

       /src/cmd/strings.c

SEE ALSO

       nm(1)

																	STRINGS(1)

STRINGS(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						STRINGS(1)

NAME

     strings -- print the strings of printable characters in files

SYNOPSIS

     strings [-a | --all] [-e encoding | --encoding=encoding] [-f | --print-file-name] [-h | --help] [-n number | --bytes=number | -number] [-o]
	     [-t radix | --radix=radix] [-v | --version] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

     For each file specified, the strings utility prints contiguous sequences of printable characters that are at least n characters long and are
     followed by an unprintable character.  The default value of n is 4.  By default, the strings utility only scans the initialized and loaded
     sections of ELF objects; for other file types, the entire file is scanned.  The strings utility is mainly used for determining the contents
     of non-text files.

     If no file name is specified as an argument, standard input is read.

     The following options are available:

     -a | --all
	     For ELF objects, scan the entire file for printable strings.

     -e encoding | --encoding=encoding
	     Select the character encoding to be used while searching for strings.  Valid values for argument encoding are:
	     s	     for single 7-bit-byte characters (ASCII, ISO 8859).
	     S	     for single 8-bit-byte characters.
	     l	     for 16-bit little-endian.
	     b	     for 16-bit big-endian.
	     L	     for 32-bit little-endian.
	     B	     for 32-bit big-endian.
	     The default is to assume that characters are encoded using a single 7-bit byte.

     -f | --print-file-name
	     Print the name of the file before each string.

     -h | --help
	     Print a usage summary and exit.

     -n number | --bytes=number | -number
	     Print the contiguous character sequence of at least number characters long, instead of the default of 4 characters.

     -o      Equivalent to specifying -t o.

     -t radix | --radix=radix
	     Print the offset from the start of the file before each string using the specified radix.	Valid values for argument radix are:
	     d	     for decimal
	     o	     for octal
	     x	     for hexadecimal

     -v | --version
	     Display a version identifier and exit.

EXIT STATUS

     The strings utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

     To display strings in /bin/ls use:
	   $ strings /bin/ls

     To display strings in all sections of /bin/ln use:
	   $ strings -a /bin/ln

     To display strings in all sections of /bin/cat prefixed with the filename and the offset within the file use:
	   $ strings -a -f -t x /bin/cat

SEE ALSO

     ar(1), nm(1), objdump(1), ranlib, readelf(1), size(1)

HISTORY

     The first FreeBSD strings utility appeared in FreeBSD v3. It was later discontinued in FreeBSD v5, when i386-only a.out format was dropped in
     favor of ELF.

AUTHORS

     The strings utility was re-written by S.Sam Arun Raj <samarunraj@gmail.com>.  This manual page was written by S.Sam Arun Raj
     <samarunraj@gmail.com>.

BSD
								 December 19, 2011							       BSD