Print the sequences of printable characters in files.

Synopsis

strings [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Description

For each FILE, prints the printable character sequences that are at least MIN characters long. If no FILE is specified, standard input is read.

Options

-n MIN Print sequences of at least MIN characters (default: 4).

-t FORMAT Print offset before each string (o=octal, x=hex, d=decimal).

-a Scan the entire file (default behavior).

-e ENCODING Select character encoding (s=7-bit, S=8-bit).

Examples

$ strings file.bin

Extract printable strings (min 4 chars).

$ strings -n 8 file.bin

Extract strings of at least 8 characters.

$ strings -t x file.bin

Show hex offsets alongside each string.

See Also

file, od, xxd, grep