strings [ various options] file

Outputs printable character sequences that are at least min-len long (default=4) and followed by an unprintable character.
For object (i.e. load modules), only prints the strings from the initialized and loaded sections by default.
Useful for determining the contents of non-text files.

-min-len -n min-len --bytes=min-len	sequences of characters must be are at least min-len characters long, default 4.
-f --print-file-name	Output the name of the file before each string.
-t radix --radix=radix	Output the offset within the file before each string. o for octal, x for hexadecimal, or d for decimal.
-o	o radix. other versions of strings have -o use decminal
-a --all	Do not scan only the initialized and loaded sections of object files; scan the whole files.
-e encoding --encoding=encoding	Specify the character encoding of the strings s = single-7-bit-byte characters (ASCII, ISO 8859, etc., default), S = single-8-bit-byte characters, b = 16-bit bigendian, B = 32-bit bigendian, L = 32-bit littleendian. Useful for finding wide character strings. l* = 16-bit littleendian,
--target=bfdname	Specify an object code format other than your system's default format.
-v, --version
--help

Helpful syntax to show most frequently occuring strings:

strings file | sort | uniq -c | sort -d | more

Show most frequently words in a text file.
( translate spaces to NULL to cause to break up by words.

tr ' ' '\000' < file | strings | sort | uniq -c | sort -r | more

SEE ar, nm, objdump, ranlib, readelf

binutils-2.14.90.0.4 2006-01-11 STRINGS(1) 341,1 Bot