LLVM-STRINGS(1)

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
2003-2026, LLVM Project