strings ( 1 ) USER COMMANDSstrings ( 1 )


NAME

strings - find and display printable strings in files

SYNOPSIS

strings [ options ] [ file ... ]

DESCRIPTION

strings searches for printable strings in regular files and writes those strings to the standard output. A printable string is any sequence of four (by default) or more printable characters terminated by a newline or NUL character.

OPTIONS

-a, --all
Scan the entire file. Always enabled in this implementation.
-l, --long-strings
Ignore newline characters as string terminators and display strings using C character escape sequences. These strings are suitably escaped for placement inside C "..." and ksh(1) $'...' string literals.
-m, --multi-byte
Scan for multibyte strings.
-n, --length|bytes=number
Set the minimum matched string length to length. For compatibility -number is equivalent to --length =number. The default value is 4.
-t, --radix|format=format
Write each string preceded by its byte offset from the start of the file. The offset radix is determined by:
d
decimal
o
octal
x
hexadecimal
-o, --octal
Equivalent to --radix=o.

SEE ALSO

grep(1), nm(1), what(1)

IMPLEMENTATION

version
strings (AT&T Research) 2000-04-01
author
Glenn Fowler <gsf@research.att.com>
author
David Korn <dgk@research.att.com>
copyright
Copyright © 1992-2008 AT&T Intellectual Property
license
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl1.0.txt