Software:strip (Unix)

strip

Developer(s)	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial release	June 12, 1972 (1972-06-12)
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like, Microsoft Windows
Type	Command

In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, the strip program removes inessential information from executable binary programs and object files, thus potentially resulting in better performance and sometimes significantly less disk space usage ('inessential information' means information that is not required for correct functioning of the binary in normal execution). This information may consist of debugging and symbol information; however the standard leaves the scope of changes up to the implementer.

Furthermore, the use of strip can improve the security of the binary against reverse engineering. It will be more difficult to analyze a binary without its information and object's names.

The effect of strip can be achieved directly by the linker. For instance, in GNU Compiler Collection this option is "-s".

The GNU Project ships an implementation of strip as part of the GNU Binutils package. strip has been ported to other operating systems including Microsoft Windows.

See also

• Stripped binary
• Executable compression
• List of Unix commands
• Strings (Unix)
• Debug symbol
• Symbol table

References

• "strip", The Single UNIX Specification, Version 2, The Open Group, 1997, http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/strip.html 

External links

• strip – Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group