"grep" offset of ascii string from binary file

linux bash binary grep ascii

grep --byte-offset --only-matching --text foobar filename

The --byte-offset option prints the offset of each matching line.

The --only-matching option makes it print offset for each matching instance instead of each matching line.

The --text option makes grep treat the binary file as a text file.

You can shorten it to:

grep -oba foobar filename

It works in the GNU version of grep, which comes with linux by default. It won't work in BSD grep (which comes with Mac by default).

linux bash binary grep ascii

You could use strings for this:

strings -a -t x filename | grep foobar

Tested with GNU binutils.

For example, where in /bin/ls does --help occur:

strings -a -t x /bin/ls | grep -- --help

Output:

14938 Try `%s --help' for more information.162f0       --help     display this help and exit

linux bash binary grep ascii

I wanted to do the same task. Though strings | grep worked, I found gsar was the very tool I needed.

The output looks like:

>gsar.exe -bic -sfoobar filename.binfilename.bin: 0x34b5: AAA foobar BBBfilename.bin: 0x56a0: foobar DDDfilename.bin: 2 matches found

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