Re: A Question About the "Strings" Utility

[Ian Lance Taylor]

address@hidden writes:

> I do not know how to find the source program of the "strings" utility
> (assuming that I have access to it somewhere on my Linux system).

I believe that Red Hat normally distributes a CD with source code
RPMs.  You should install the one for the binutils.  That will include
the source code for strings.

You can find the basic source code for the binutils package at
    http://sources.redhat.com/binutils/
Red Hat may have applied some patches in their actual release.
(Although that web page is at redhat.com, that is the underlying GNU
source code, and the Red Hat release draws their sources from a
different place which has patches).

> Once I have that
> information, I shall compare what I have done with the system standard
> and try to learn how the standard software differs from what I have
> written.  If it turns out that I can provide an improved version of
> "strings" to you - one which at least identifies more strings - I shall
> certainly do that.  Since I am already identifying strings which the
> system standard utility does not identify, it is clear that there are
> differences in the definition of what constitutes a string.  Perhaps the
> strings which I identify should not be considered strings, though, if
> that is the case, I do not know why it is the case: what I identify as
> strings certainly seem to be "valid" strings.

The distributed strings program intentionally does not scan portions
of an object file by default.  You should compare your output with the
output of `strings -a'.

> P.S: I also have some utilities of my own which it might prove fruitful
> to "publish" as free software, so I would like some information about how
> I might do that.  These include a "walk-subtree" module which takes an
> initial directory as argument (using the default directory as the default
> argument) and traverses the directory subtree using that directory as
> "root" and executes in each directory whatever command is specified as
> the (standard) argument (properly quoted, of course, to provide a UNIX /
> Linux command as argument).  I believe that this can be a useful tool for
> system administration.

Sounds like find -exec.

> It would be useful / helpful to me if you could tell me something about
> how I could provide these software tools to you and / or to the Linux
> community so that others may use them.

I would say: just do it.  For infrastructure support, take a look at
http://sourceforge.net/.

Ian