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.

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.

--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.

BUGS

To report bugs, please visit <https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/labels/tools:llvm-strings/>.

AUTHOR

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

COPYRIGHT

2003-2025, LLVM Project