Strings (Unix): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 12:28, 9 July 2023

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==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]]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. By default, it only prints the strings from the initialized and loaded sections of object files; for other types of files, it prints the strings from the whole file. But it doesn't make the behavior of [[Cat_(Unix)|cat]] and '''strings''' the same on regular text files. [[Cat_(Unix)|cat]] processes the non printable characters and output it to the terminal but '''strings''' ignore them.

Common usage includes piping its output to {{mono|[[grep]]}} and {{mono|[[Fold (Unix)|fold]]}} or redirecting the output to a [[Computer file|file]].<ref>{{cite book

| last = Kiddle

| first = Oliver

| author2 = Jerry Peek

| author3 = Peter Stephenson

| title = From Bash to Z Shell

| year = 2005

| ___location = New York, NY

| publisher = Apress

| isbn = 978-1-590-59376-9

| page = 413

| oclc = 57450917

| url = https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781590593769}}</ref>

It is part of the [[GNU Binary Utilities]] ({{mono|binutils}}), and has been ported to other operating systems including [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]].<ref>[[cygwin]]</ref>