Strings

The Strings tab (4) extracts text from five sources:

• User strings — string literals from the #US metadata heap (the strings your code uses directly)
• Metadata strings — type names, method names, namespace names from the #Strings heap
• Raw scan — ASCII string extraction from the entire file, similar to the Unix strings command
• Raw (UTF-16) — UTF-16 string extraction from the entire file; managed string literals freeze as UTF-16 in Native AOT images, so this sub-tab is where an AOT binary’s string constants appear
• Frozen (AOT) — frozen string literals recovered from a Native AOT binary’s frozen object region, the AOT counterpart of the #US heap. On Windows and macOS the region is read from the file; on Linux it is a zero-fill region the runtime rebuilds at startup, so dotsider rehydrates the dehydrated data to recover the same literals

Copy strings

Press y on a focused table row to copy the string value to the clipboard. Press Enter to open a detail popup where you can select and copy specific portions of longer strings. In the detail popup, iw and yiw let you grab individual words without reaching for the mouse. V and yy work for full-line selection and copy.

Minimum length

Use the --min-len / -n flag to control the minimum length for both raw scans:

dotsider MyApp.dll -n 8

The default minimum is 4 characters. Increase it to reduce noise in large assemblies. Inside the TUI, + and - adjust it live on either raw sub-tab.