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Strings v2.54

  • Article

By Mark Russinovich

Published: June 22, 2021

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Introduction

Working on NT and Win2K means that executables and object files will many times have embedded UNICODE strings that you cannot easily see with a standard ASCII strings or grep programs. So we decided to roll our own. Strings just scans the file you pass it for UNICODE (or ASCII) strings of a default length of 3 or more UNICODE (or ASCII) characters. Note that it works under Windows 95 as well.

Using Strings

Usage:

strings [-a] [-f offset] [-b bytes] [-n length] [-o] [-q] [-s] [-u] <file or directory>

Strings takes wild-card expressions for file names, and additional command line parameters are defined as follows:

Parameter Description
-a Ascii-only search (Unicode and Ascii is default)
-b Bytes of file to scan
-f File offset at which to start scanning.
-o Print offset in file string was located
-n Minimum string length (default is 3)
-s Recurse subdirectories
-u Unicode-only search (Unicode and Ascii is default)
-nobanner Do not display the startup banner and copyright message.

To search one or more files for the presence of a particular string using strings use a command like this:

strings * | findstr /i TextToSearchFor

Download Download Strings (534 KB)

Runs on:

  • Client: Windows Vista and higher
  • Server: Windows Server 2008 and higher
  • Nano Server: 2016 and higher