***** ******* **** * ** * **** ***** * * * * * * * * * * **** * **** * * * * * *** **** * * * * * * * * * * * ***** * * * * * ** ***** ***** ----------------------------------------------------- Release 1.1 Written by: Anders Lindgren Extract character strings from (all type of) files. ----------------------------------------------------- This program may be freely distributed, but no warranty is given! You can include this program in any commercial product, but if you do so, I would appreciate a registrated copy. If you think this utility is useful, please send me a postcard telling me so. Please also write to me if you have any suggestions, questions or if you like to give me a $ or two. (I'm just a poor soldier doing my duty for my country). Address:Anders Lindgren Mälarblick 8 S-161 51 Bromma Sweden BBS: SUGA, +46 (0)8 348523 +46 (0)8 343276 (Log on, Write "Brev Anders Lindgren", to write a letter to me). UseNet: d91ali@csd.uu.se ----------------------------------------------------- Swedish User Group of Amiga is a non-profit nation wide club for Amiga-freaks in sweden. It has been operating for many years (I joined in around -87, and have been more or less active ever since.) A newspaper with 16 to 20 pages is beeing distrubuted quaterly. A BBS is runed using the command line program NiKom, which is written by a member of the club. (Too bad for you non swedish speaking people that it isn't translated yet.) For the members in Stockholm we have a meeting every sunday between 11am and 3pm. Join by inserting only 150:- (less than $20) into the PostGiro account 13 43 32-2. You can also just show up at the "Verksta'n" to see what it's all about! Address: SUGA Disponentvillan, Verkstan Norrtullsgatan 12k S-113 27 Stockholm ----------------------------------------------------- 0 INSTALLATION I OVERVIEW II USAGE III OPTIONS IV EXAMPLE V REVISIONS 0 INSTALLATION This is a very simple operation to anyone who has the least knowledge of CLI or Shell. Just copy the file "strings" to your C: directory, or to anywhere else in your path. I also recomend you, if you hasn't got one already, to create a directory called "man" or "doc" and collect all your documentation files there. I OVERVIEW Strings is a short utility program written to find character strings in any type of file, typically an executable. It will read the file, searching for all strings. If one is found, it is printed out. Strings can be used to see which messages a program can print out, or to find which libraries it requiers. The program can also be used as a "filter" to strip out unwanted control character. Its use is only limited to Your imagination. The program is fairly short, only about 3 Kb. It "stands on its own legs", i.e. it doesn't use any external libraries or resources. No Workbench icon exists because you have no use for it from the wb. For you technicans out there; Strings is written in C, using the SAS C compiler. II USAGE To use the program type: strings [-e] [-nX] [-o outfile] [-b] [infile] or:strings -u|-? If a "infile" is given, Strings will read from it, otherwise it will read from the standard input. (normally the keyboard). If the -o switch exists the output will be written to a separate output file, otherwist the output will be printed to the standard output (normally the screen). This means that Strings can simply be made part of a pipeline, for those blessed with shells which are capable if it. (That means almost every shell on the market, excpet Commodores own. I personally recomend you to buy William S. Hawes' WShell.) If "infile" is present on the command line, it must be the last argument. A "string" is a series of printable characters. Leading spaces is not considered part of a string. The program can be terminated by pressing ctrl-C, or by executing a "Break" command from another CLI/Shell. Problems: Due to the difficulties to decide what is a string and what is just random characters, some lines of garbage can be printed. You, the user, can influense this by using the -e and -n switches appropriate (See the next section). III OPTIONS -e : Print out strings which contains characters from the extended character set. (That means characters from 160 to 255). By default this switch is disabled. If the switch is present, the extended characterset is used. (Why? Well, in Sweden and many other europeean contries, the characters in the "upper half" is used often, for example "åäö" is part of the swedish alphabet. All the special Amiga characters, like © ° ® is included there etc.) -nX : Set the length of the shortest string to print. By default the value of X is six. -o name : Write the output to file "name" instead of to the standard output. -b : Write the position of the string, in hexadecimal bytes, in front of the string. -u or -?: Print out a simple help text. The switched -e and -b toggles from disabled to enabled, and vice versa. If two switches of the same type, "strings -e -e", exists on the command line, they take eachother out. If several -n switches exist the last one rules. To "force" -e or -b into disabled or enabled mode, write -e0 or -e1 respecively. This means that You can create an alias with other defaults than the ones I have choosed, without loosing any flexibility. (Se section EXAMPLE). IV EXAMPLE 1> strings c:sort FROM/A,TO/A,COLSTART/K Bad args ... The result is that some lines of text, containing the command "sort"s messages, will scroll by. 1> strings -b c:sort 069D:FROM/A,TO/A,COLSTART/K 06B5:Bad args ... The -b switch enables the byteoffset, "069D:" etc., to be printed. > strings -e c:sort Iúÿî(lÿü/ p$AÕÊÕÊ. ... FROM/A,TO/A,COLSTART/K Bad args ... The -e switch adds all high byte characters to its list of printable characters, so some lines containing garbage will be printed. Fortunately all true strings containing the extended character set will be printed. 1> strings -n1 -e -oallan.ok allan.txt This line will act as a simple control-code stripper, since it will let all printable characters through. (Note the -n1, which means that the shortest string treshhold is one character). 1> alias strings "strings -e -b -n10" This alias works on WShell (it may differ a little on other shells). It makes strings use the extended character set by default, it prints out the byteoffset, and the shortest line it prints is 10 characters long. Note, that you can still use the switches to disable the options and to set a new -n value. V RELEASES Release 1: 28-dec-90 Containing V1.0 binary and doc. (No Source, since the clop() (Command Line Option Parser) routine in ALiLib isn't fixed yet). XX-xxx-XX Leading spaces not considered part of the string. Release 1.1: 17-Sep-93 Well, what the heck, I just recompiled the program using SAS/C 6.3, and released it. A sequence of characters is now considered a string if it is terminated by a 0, a newline, a carriage return or a tab. (I'm not sure I fixed this before or after R1, but here it is.) The source is distributed, but remember that I wrote it wears ago.