This directory of Linux commands is from Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition.
Click on any of the 687 commands below to get a description and list of available options. All links in the command summaries point to the online version of the book on Safari Bookshelf.
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strings
strings [options] files
Search each file specified and print any printable character strings found that are at least four characters long and followed by an unprintable character. Often used to find human-readable content within binary files.
Options
Scan entire object files; default is to scan only the initialized and loaded sections for object files.
Specify the character encoding of the strings to be found. Possible values are:
b 16-bit big-endian
B 32-bit big-endian
l 16-bit little-endian
L 32-bit little-endian
s Single-7-bit-byte characters, such as ASCII, ISO-8859, etc. (the default)
S Single-8-bit-byte characters.
Print the name of the file before each string.
Print only strings that are at least min-len characters.
The same as -t o.
Print the offset within the file before each string, in the format specified by base:
d Decimal
o Octal
x Hexadecimal
Specify an alternative object code format to the system default. Valid targets include elf32-i386, a.out-i386-linux, efi-app-ia32, elf32-little, elf32-big, srec, symbolsrec, tekhex, binary, ihex, and trad-core.
Print help message and then exit. The help message includes a list of valid targets.
Print version information and then exit.
