Linux Strings Program

Strings

strings is a command line tool to read files. On regular files its function is same as less, more, or cat for that matter.

But as per the man page- strings prints the strings of printable character in files

I feel like this progarm is godsend. With help of strings we can easily read files, which regular editors like vim, less fail to parse.

Strings takes in the files, and scoures through it and prints out all the characters which can be parsed as string. On finding any non printable character the line is terminated. A new line is started from the next string.

Try parsing the /proc/[pid]/environ file with help of cat, vim or less and then with strings, you will realize what the program is made for.