Thank you for opening this bug and helping make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately you did not specify what version of Ubuntu (and of coreutils) you are using, which makes it a bit more difficult to pinpoint your issue.
Nevertheless, I went ahead and checked Lucid (since, in your description, you refer to Lucid):
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ od --version
od (GNU coreutils) 7.4
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Jim Meyering.
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ od --help | grep strings
-S, --strings[=BYTES] output strings of at least BYTES graphic chars
ubuntu@cempedak:~$
From 'man od' I see:
-S, --strings[=BYTES] output strings of at least BYTES graphic chars
So, at least on Lucid, this is not an issue. So, without more details from you, I do not see this issue.
Also, the full documentation for any coreutils utility is provided as an 'info' page; '--help' and 'man' are summarised (in fact, the 'man' entries are generated _from_ the ' --help').
Finally, I fail to see why this would be a trick -- even more a nasty one -- played by upstream coreutils on any one. Bugs happen.
Thank you for opening this bug and helping make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately you did not specify what version of Ubuntu (and of coreutils) you are using, which makes it a bit more difficult to pinpoint your issue.
Nevertheless, I went ahead and checked Lucid (since, in your description, you refer to Lucid):
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ lsb_release -a gnu.org/ licenses/ gpl.html>.
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ od --version
od (GNU coreutils) 7.4
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Jim Meyering.
ubuntu@cempedak:~$ od --help | grep strings
-S, --strings[=BYTES] output strings of at least BYTES graphic chars
ubuntu@cempedak:~$
From 'man od' I see:
-S, --strings[=BYTES]
output strings of at least BYTES graphic chars
So, at least on Lucid, this is not an issue. So, without more details from you, I do not see this issue.
Also, the full documentation for any coreutils utility is provided as an 'info' page; '--help' and 'man' are summarised (in fact, the 'man' entries are generated _from_ the ' --help').
Finally, I fail to see why this would be a trick -- even more a nasty one -- played by upstream coreutils on any one. Bugs happen.
Marking Incomplete/Low