computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, strings is a program in

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

, Plan 9,

Inferno Inferno may refer to: * Hell, an afterlife place of suffering * Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire Film * ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film * Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker * Inferno (1973 fi ...

, and

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s that finds and prints text

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

embedded in binary files such as executables. It can be used on object files and

core dump In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise termina ...

Overview

Strings are recognized by looking for sequences of at least 4 (by default) printable characters terminating in a NUL character (that is,

null-terminated string In computer programming, a null-terminated string is a character string stored as an array containing the characters and terminated with a null character (a character with a value of zero, called NUL in this article). Alternative names are C str ...

s). Some implementations provide options for determining what is recognized as a printable character, which is useful for finding non-ASCII and wide character text. Common usage includes piping its output to and or redirecting the output to a

file File or filing may refer to: Mechanical tools and processes * File (tool), a tool used to ''remove'' fine amounts of material from a workpiece **Filing (metalworking), a material removal process in manufacturing ** Nail file, a tool used to gent ...

. It is part of the

GNU Binary Utilities The GNU Binary Utilities, or , are a set of programming tools for creating and managing binary programs, object files, libraries, profile data, and assembly source code. Tools They were originally written by programmers at Cygnus Solutions. ...

(), and has been ported to other operating systems including

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

. cygwin

Example

Using ''strings'' to print sequences of characters that are at least 8 characters long (this command prints the system's BIOS information; should be run as root): dd if=/dev/mem bs=1k skip=768 count=256 2>/dev/null , strings -n 8 , less

References

External links

* * * Unix text processing utilities Unix SUS2008 utilities Plan 9 commands Inferno (operating system) commands String (computer science) {{unix-stub

Overview

Example

See also

References

External links