A PowerShell version of the strings command
Get-Strings
Searches the contents of a file object and displays discovered strings of printable characters. Non-printable characters are stripped from the output by default.
Get-Strings [-FilePath] <String[]> [-Encoding <String>] [-MinimumLength <UInt32>] [-ShowNonPrintable] [-NonPrintablePlaceHolder <String>] [<CommonParameters>]
"Strings" is a well-known, common command for *NIX systems. Since Windows does not include a version of this command, this function aims to recreate some of that functionality.
The function takes a FilePath as a mandatory argument and a MinimumLength (default 4) as an optional argument.
By default, it will search for both ASCII and Unicode strings. An optional argument, Encoding, can be used to only search for one or the other.
Check Get-Help for other arguments.
-FilePath <String[]>
Absolute or relative path to the object to be searched.
Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByPropertyName)
Accept wildcard characters? false
-Encoding <String>
Instructs the function to search for Ascii or Unicode strings of characters.
Default is 'Both'.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value Default
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false
-MinimumLength <UInt32>
The shortest sequence of characters to be included in the search results.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value 4
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false
-ShowNonPrintable [<SwitchParameter>]
By default, the function strips non-printable characters from the output. By enabling this, those characters will be included.
Not recommended when displaying output as STDOUT uhles combined with NonPrintablePlaceHolder.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value False
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false
-NonPrintablePlaceHolder <String>
This value lets you substitute any other character for non-printable characters in the output.
If any value is specified, ShowNonPrintable is implicitly set to true.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false
<CommonParameters>
This cmdlet supports the common parameters: Verbose, Debug, ErrorAction, ErrorVariable, WarningAction, WarningVariable, OutBuffer, PipelineVariable, and OutVariable. For more information, see about_CommonParameters (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=113216).
Written by Word Eater (WordEaterNG@gmail.com)
I wrote this because PowerSploit's Get-Strings is no longer being actively maintained.
Also, every time I tried to download that Get-Strings.ps1 code, or cut and paste it into Notepad++ my anti-malware software would immediately delete it.
I rolled my own which, in places, resembles the other one.
I made use of OpenAI's ChatGPT to tune this script. ChatGPT can't (reliably) write a valid script for you from scratch, but it can sure help you figure out bits and pieces. It also takes being called out when it makes an error much better than some real people.
It has been tested on Windows 10, Windows Server 2019, and Kali Linux 2022.4
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 1 --------------------------
PS > Get-Strings C:\WINDOWS\System32\notepad.exe
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 2 --------------------------
PS > Get-Strings -FilePath C:\WINDOWS\System32\notepad.exe -MinimumLength -Encoding Unicode
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 3 --------------------------
PS > Get-Strings /usr/bin/attr -NonPrintablePlaceHolder '.' -Encoding Ascii -Verbose
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 4 --------------------------
PS > Get-Strings C:\WINDOWS\System32\notepad.exe -PlaceHolder '.'
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 5 --------------------------
PS > Get-Strings /usr/bin/mousepad -MinimumLength 8 -ShowNonPrintable | Out-File .\mousepad-strings.txt
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 6 --------------------------
PS > Get-ChildItem C:\WINDOWS\*.dll -Recurse | ForEach-Object { Get-Strings $_ -MinimumLength 12 }