linux strings command

from the man pages:

For each file given, GNU strings prints the printable character
sequences that are at least 4 characters long (or the number given with
the options below) and are followed by an unprintable character. By
default, it only prints the strings from the initialized and loaded
sections of object files; for other types of files, it prints the
strings from the whole file.

strings is mainly useful for determining the contents of non-text
files.

it prints the printable characters of non-text files....pretty cool