iOS 5.0.1 (jailbroken) binutils package or alternative to search for strings in binaries

Question

I have a jailbroken iOS 5.0.1 on an iPhone 4S. I checked out if there is a binutils package and haven't found it. Is there a repository for it? What would be the next best way to search for strings in binary files (strings command emulation).

Answer 1

The GNU package "binutils", on darwin, is handled by the package "cctools" (which contains a really old version of gas, but is mostly Apple-specific tooling). We use the package name "odcctools", due to a lineage from OpenDarwin. Regardless, if you use the version of strings from there on a binary that was not linked by the linker in that same package, you will get an error, but can solve that by putting strings in raw mode using "-"; so: "strings - myBinary".