LLVM-STRINGS(1)

hiii bestie 💖 welcome to LLVM-STRINGS(1) — the manual page for llvm-strings, brought to you by LLVM. okay so grab your iced coffee and let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

llvm-strings — print strings 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

llvm-strings [options] [input...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

llvm-strings is a tool intended as a drop-in replacement for GNU's strings, which looks for printable strings in files and writes them to the standard output stream. A printable string is any sequence of four (by default) or more printable ASCII characters. The end of the file, or any other byte, terminates the current sequence.

llvm-strings looks for strings in each input file specified. Unlike GNU strings, it looks in the entire input file, regardless of file format, rather than restricting the search to certain sections of object files. If - is specified as an input, or no input is specified, the program reads from the standard input stream. Not me checking the whole file no matter the format — iconic behavior ✨

🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

$ cat input.txt
bars
foo
wibble blob
$ llvm-strings input.txt
bars
wibble blob

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --all, -a — silently ignored. Present for GNU strings compatibility, so it's literally just there to vibe.
• --bytes=<length>, -n — set the minimum number of printable ASCII characters required for a sequence of bytes to be considered a string. The default value is 4.
• --help, -h — display a summary of command line options.
• --print-file-name, -f — display the name of the containing file before each string.

Example:

$ llvm-strings --print-file-name test.o test.elf
test.o: _Z5hellov
test.o: some_bss
test.o: test.cpp
test.o: main
test.elf: test.cpp
test.elf: test2.cpp
test.elf: _Z5hellov
test.elf: main
test.elf: some_bss

• --radix=<radix>, -t — display the offset within the file of each string, before the string and using the specified radix. Valid <radix> values are o, d and x for octal, decimal and hexadecimal respectively.

Example:

$ llvm-strings --radix=o test.o
    1054 _Z5hellov
    1066 .rela.text
    1101 .comment
    1112 some_bss
    1123 .bss
    1130 test.cpp
    1141 main
$ llvm-strings --radix=d test.o
    556 _Z5hellov
    566 .rela.text
    577 .comment
    586 some_bss
    595 .bss
    600 test.cpp
    609 main
$ llvm-strings -t x test.o
    22c _Z5hellov
    236 .rela.text
    241 .comment
    24a some_bss
    253 .bss
    258 test.cpp
    261 main

• --version — display the version of the llvm-strings executable.
• @<FILE> — read command-line options from response file <FILE>.

🌟 EXIT STATUS 🌟

llvm-strings exits with a non-zero exit code if there is an error. Otherwise, it exits with code 0. So: error = non-zero, all good = 0, periodt 💅

💀 BUGS 💀

To report bugs, please visit <<https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/labels/tools:llvm-strings/>>. The link is giving "please file a bug" energy 🫶

🌈 Author 🌈

Maintained by the LLVM Team (https://llvm.org/).

👑 Copyright 👑

2003-2026, LLVM Project

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stay slay, bestie 💖 — this was LLVM-STRINGS(1) from LLVM, dated 2026-05-15, page 21, and that's the whole manual. periodt ✨🫶