.\" Copyright (c) 2007 S.Sam Arun Raj
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
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.\" $Id: strings.1 3360 2016-01-24 18:34:06Z jkoshy $
.\"
.Dd January 24, 2016
.Dt STRINGS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm strings
.Nd "print the strings of printable characters in files"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl a | Fl -all
.Op Fl e Ar encoding | Fl -encoding= Ns Ar encoding
.Op Fl f | Fl -print-file-name
.Op Fl h | Fl -help
.Op Fl n Ar number | Fl -bytes= Ns Ar number | Fl Ar number
.Op Fl o
.Op Fl t Ar radix | Fl -radix= Ns Ar radix
.Op Fl v | Fl -version
.Op Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
For each
.Ar file
specified, the
.Nm
utility prints contiguous sequences of printable
characters that are at least
.Va n
characters long and are followed by an unprintable character.
The default value of
.Va n
is 4.
By default, the
.Nm
utility only scans the initialized and loaded sections of ELF objects;
for other file types, the entire file is scanned.
The
.Nm
utility is mainly used for determining the contents of non-text files.
.Pp
If no file name is specified as an argument, standard input is read.
.Pp
The following options are available:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl a | Fl -all
For ELF objects, scan the entire file for printable strings.
.It Fl e Ar encoding | Fl -encoding= Ns Ar encoding
Select the character encoding to be used while searching for strings.
Valid values for argument
.Ar encoding
are:
.Bl -tag -width indent -compact
.It Ar s
for single 7-bit-byte characters (ASCII, ISO 8859).
.It Ar S
for single 8-bit-byte characters.
.It Ar l
for 16-bit little-endian.
.It Ar b
for 16-bit big-endian.
.It Ar L
for 32-bit little-endian.
.It Ar B
for 32-bit big-endian.
.El
The default is to assume that characters are encoded using a single
7-bit byte.
.It Fl f | Fl -print-file-name
Print the name of the file before each string.
.It Fl h | Fl -help
Print a usage summary and exit.
.It Xo
.Fl n Ar number |
.Fl -bytes= Ns Ar number |
.Fl Ar number
.Xc
Print the contiguous character sequence of at least
.Ar number
characters long, instead of the default of 4 characters.
Argument
.Ar number
should specify a positive decimal integer.
.It Fl o
Equivalent to specifying
.Fl t Ar o .
.It Fl t Ar radix | Fl -radix= Ns Ar radix
Print the offset from the start of the file before each string
using the specified radix.
Valid values for argument
.Ar radix
are:
.Bl -tag -width indent -compact
.It Ar d
for decimal
.It Ar o
for octal
.It Ar x
for hexadecimal
.El
.It Fl v | Fl -version
Display a version identifier and exit.
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
To display strings in
.Pa /bin/ls
use:
.Dl "$ strings /bin/ls"
.Pp
To display strings in all sections of
.Pa /bin/ln
use:
.Dl "$ strings -a /bin/ln"
.Pp
To display strings in all sections of
.Pa /bin/cat
prefixed with the filename and the offset within the file use:
.Dl "$ strings -a -f -t x /bin/cat"
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ar 1 ,
.Xr nm 1 ,
.Xr objdump 1 ,
.Xr ranlib ,
.Xr readelf 1 ,
.Xr size 1
.Sh HISTORY
The first FreeBSD
.Nm
utility appeared in
.Fx v3.
It was later discontinued in
.Fx v5 ,
when i386-only a.out format was dropped in favor of ELF.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
utility was re-written by
.An S.Sam Arun Raj Aq Mt samarunraj@gmail.com .
This manual page was written by
.An S.Sam Arun Raj Aq Mt samarunraj@gmail.com .