STRINGS(1)

✨ STRINGS(1) — the GNU Development Tools era 💅

okay bestie, grab your iced coffee because we're about to talk about my girl strings from the <pink>GNU Development Tools</pink> lineup, and honestly? she EATS. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

strings — print the sequences of printable characters in files. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly. periodt. 💖

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

strings [-afovV] [-min-len]
        [-n min-len] [--bytes=min-len]
        [-t radix] [--radix=radix]
        [-e encoding] [--encoding=encoding]
        [-U method] [--unicode=method]
        [-] [--all] [--print-file-name]
        [-T bfdname] [--target=bfdname]
        [-w] [--include-all-whitespace]
        [-s] [--output-separator sep_string]
        [--help] [--version] file...

like, so many flags. she's high maintenance but she delivers. 🫶

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so for every file you hand her, GNU strings prints out the printable character sequences that are at least 4 characters long — or whatever number you set with the options below, bestie, your call — and that are followed by an unprintable character. that's the whole vibe check. 🔥

okay so here's the tea: depending on how the strings program was configured at build time, she'll default to either 👑 showing all the printable sequences she can find in each file, or only those sequences that live in loadable, initialized data sections. and if the file type is straight-up unrecognizable? or if strings is reading from stdin? then she always shows all the printable sequences she can find. no cap. 💯

for backwards compatibility, any file that shows up after a command-line option of just - will also get scanned in full, regardless of whether a -d option is hanging around. legacy behaviour, we respect her. 🙈

and fr fr, strings is mainly useful for figuring out the contents of non-text files. she's the detective. the main character. 🔍✨

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💜 OPTIONS 💜

• -a, --all — scan the whole file, regardless of what sections it contains or whether those sections are loaded or initialized. normally this is the default behaviour, but strings can be configured so that -d is the default instead.
• - — this one is position dependent bestie, listen up: it forces strings to perform full scans of any file mentioned after the - on the command line, even if the -d option has been specified. so it's giving "from here on out, everything gets the full treatment." 💅
• -d, --data — only print strings from initialized, loaded data sections in the file. this may reduce the amount of garbage in your output, which is nice, but it also exposes the strings program to any security flaws that may be present in the BFD library used to scan and load sections. 😭 strings can be configured so that this option is the default behaviour — and in those cases you can hit her with -a to skip the BFD library entirely and just print all the strings found in the file instead.
• -f, --print-file-name — print the name of the file before each string. yes queen, label your sources. 🏷️
• --help — print a summary of the program usage on the standard output and exit. she's happy to explain herself.
• -min-len, -n min-len, --bytes=min-len — print sequences of displayable characters that are at least min-len characters long. if you don't specify it, the default minimum length is 4. the distinction between displayable and non-displayable characters depends on the setting of the -e and -U options. and important: sequences are always terminated at control characters such as new-line and carriage-return — but not the tab character. tabs get to stay. tab rights. 🫶
• -o — like -t o. some other versions of strings have -o act like -t d instead. since we can not be compatible with both ways, we simply chose one. sorry to the other camp, we had to pick a lane. 🚗
• -t radix, --radix=radix — print the offset within the file before each string. the single character argument specifies the radix of the offset — o for octal, x for hexadecimal, or d for decimal. pick your number base, babe. 🔢
• -e encoding, --encoding=encoding — select the character encoding of the strings that are to be found. possible values for encoding are: s = single-7-bit-byte characters (default), S = single-8-bit-byte characters, b = 16-bit bigendian, l = 16-bit littleendian, B = 32-bit bigendian, L = 32-bit littleendian. useful for finding wide character strings. (l and b apply to, for example, Unicode UTF-16/UCS-2 encodings). 😌
• -U [d|i|l|e|x|h], --unicode=[default|invalid|locale|escape|hex|highlight] — controls the display of UTF-8 encoded multibyte characters in strings. the default (--unicode=default) is to give them no special treatment, and instead rely upon the setting of the --encoding option. the other values for this option automatically enable --encoding=S.
  • --unicode=invalid treats them as non-graphic characters and hence not part of a valid string. all the remaining options treat them as valid string characters. 💀
  • --unicode=locale displays them in the current locale, which may or may not support UTF-8 encoding.
  • --unicode=hex displays them as hex byte sequences enclosed between <> characters.
  • --unicode=escape displays them as escape sequences (\uxxxx).
  • --unicode=highlight displays them as escape sequences highlighted in red (if supported by the output device). the colouring is intended to draw attention to the presence of unicode sequences where they might not be expected. iconic behaviour honestly. 🔴✨
• -T bfdname, --target=bfdname — specify an object code format other than your system's default format.
• -v, -V, --version — print the program version number on the standard output and exit.
• -w, --include-all-whitespace — by default, tab and space characters are included in the strings that are displayed, but other whitespace characters, such a newlines and carriage returns, are not. the -w option changes this so that all whitespace characters are considered to be part of a string. whitespace girlies, this one's for you. 🌬️
• -s, --output-separator — by default, output strings are delimited by a new-line. this option allows you to supply any string to be used as the output record separator. useful with --include-all-whitespace where strings may contain new-lines internally. separation era. ✂️
• @file — read command-line options from file. the options read are inserted in place of the original @file option. if file does not exist, or cannot be read, then the option will be treated literally, and not removed. 😳
  • options in file are separated by whitespace. a whitespace character may be included in an option by surrounding the entire option in either single or double quotes. any character (including a backslash) may be included by prefixing the character to be included with a backslash. the file may itself contain additional @file options; any such options will be processed recursively. it's giving inception, and we love that for her. 🌀

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

go read these too bestie, they're all part of the same friendship group: ar(1), nm(1), objdump(1), ranlib(1), readelf(1) and the Info entries for binutils. 💖

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright (c) 1991-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

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and that's the whole page bestie, no crumbs left. 🍓 this was <rainbow>STRINGS(1)</rainbow> from binutils-2.47, dated 2026-09-05 — stay printable, stay iconic, and may all your strings be terminated by an unprintable character. mwah. 💅💖🦋