strings (Unix)

Shell command for extracting printable text from a binary file

Not to be confused with string (computing).

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strings
The `strings` command
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	Plan 9: MIT License

strings is a shell command that extracts printable character strings from a file – which is particular useful for analyzing the content of a binary file. By definition, a binary file contains data that is not printable text yet a binary file often does contain some printable character text – often in relatively short sequences distributed throughout the file. These portions of the binary file can be informative as to what the file contains overall. For a text file, a file containing all printable characters, the command prints the entire file content, and therefore, provides no utility over more commonly used file output commands such as cat .

The command searches for sequences of printable characters that end with a NUL character but ignores any sequence that is less than a specified length or 4 characters by default. Some implementations provide options for determining what is recognized as a printable character, which is useful for finding non-ASCII and wide character text. By default, it only selects strings from the initialized and loaded sections of an object file. For other types of files, it selects strings from the whole file.

The command is available in Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like systems. It is part of the GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), and has been implemented in other operating systems including Windows.^[1]

Example

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The following command searches the system's BIOS for strings that are at least 8 characters long:

dd if=/dev/mem bs=1k skip=768 count=256 2>/dev/null | strings -n 8

References

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^ cygwin

External links

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The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands

strings – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group
strings(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1
strings(1) – Inferno General commands Manual

v t e Plan 9 command-line interface programs and shell builtins
File system	chmod chgrp cmp cp dd du file gzip ls mkdir pwd rm split tee touch
Processes	kill ps
User environment	passwd who
Text processing	awk basename comm diff ed eqn join sed sort spell strings tail tr troff uniq wc
Shell builtins	echo test
Networking	ip/ipconfig ip/ping netstat
Searching	grep
Software development	ar hoc lex nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal fortune sleep
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v t e Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins
File system	cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List

Example

See also

References

External links