Pax (Unix); reduce utility bills

Monday, August 4th, 2008

pax is a utility defined and created by the IEEE Std 1003.2 (POSIX.2) standard. By default, it creates archives in ustar format, also defined by the POSIX standard. Rather than sort out the incompatible options that have crept up between tar and cpio, along with their implementations across various versions of UNIX, the IEEE designed a new archive utility. Pax means “peace” in Latin, so the utility is named to create peace between the tar and cpio format supporters.


See also

  • List of Unix programs

Strings (Unix); Expectation utilities allow for

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

In computer software, strings is a program in Unix-like operating systems that prints the strings found in an executable.

It can be used on object files, and core dumps.

Strings are recognised by looking for sequences of at least 4 (by default) printable characters terminating in a NUL character (that is, C strings). Some implementations provide options for determining what is recognised as a printable character, which is useful for finding non-ASCII and wide character text.

Common usage includes piping it to grep and fold or redirecting the output to a file.

It is part of the GNU Binary Utilities (binutils), and has been ported to other operating systems including Microsoft Windows.


Example

$ strings foobar
Qåtd
/lib/ld-linux.so.2
_Jv_RegisterClasses
__gmon_start__
libc.so.6
puts
_IO_stdin_used
__libc_start_main
GLIBC_2.0
...


See also

  • cat
  • GNU Debugger
  • strip


External links

Ptx (Unix); utility

Friday, February 8th, 2008

ptx is a Unix utility, named for the permuterm index which can perform the function of the Keyword in Context (KWIC) search mode. There is a corresponding IBM mainframe utility which performs the same function.


See also

  • Concordancer

Ptx (Unix); utility when

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

ptx is a Unix utility, named for the permuterm index which can perform the function of the Keyword in Context (KWIC) search mode. There is a corresponding IBM mainframe utility which performs the same function.


See also

  • Concordancer