strings—finds any printable strings in an object or binary file

strings [ –a ] [ –o ] [ –number ] [ filename... ]

The strings command looks for ASCII strings in a binary file. A string is any sequence of four or more printing characters ending with a newline or a null character. strings is useful for identifying random object files and many other things.

Example A.53.

strings /bin/nawk | head -2

EXPLANATION

Prints any ASCII text in the first two lines of the binary executable /bin/nawk.