Kent Johnson wrote:
cjl wrote:
Hey all:
I am working on a little script that needs to pull the strings out of a
binary file, and then manipulate them with python.
The command line utility "strings" (part of binutils) has exactly the
functionality I need, but I was thinking about trying to implement this
in pure python.
I did some reading on opening and reading binary files, etc., and was
just wondering if people think this is possible, or worth my time (as a
learning exercise), or if something like this already exists.
I think a bare-bones version is pretty simple:
- read the file
- use re.split() to split on non-printable characters (string.printable
could be handy here)
- print anything in the resulting list that is at least 4 characters
The binutils version may well use a zero terminator character to
differentiate between random chunks of printable characters and those
explicitly genreated as strings from C. Or it may not ...
Since you mention this as a learning exercise I'll refrain from posting
code but it's only a handful of lines...of course implementing all of
'strings' is a bit more work.
regards
Steve
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