manpagez: man pages & more
man strings(1)
Home | html | info | man
strings(1)                                                          strings(1)




NAME

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


SYNOPSIS

       strings [ - ] [ -a ] [ -o ] [ -t format ] [ -number ]  [  -n  number  ]
       [--] [file ...]


DESCRIPTION

       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 with a newline or a  null.   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 infor-
       mation about only that object file and not the entire library.   (Typi-
       cally  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.


SEE ALSO

       od(1)


BUGS

       The algorithm for identifying strings is extremely primitive.



Apple Computer, Inc.          September 11, 2006                    strings(1)

Mac OS X 10.7 - Generated Wed Aug 10 15:42:53 CDT 2011
© manpagez.com 2000-2024
Individual documents may contain additional copyright information.