Why does this not work? echo 'abc' | strings

Question

I found

tcpdump -l -s0 -w - tcp dst port 80 | strings

on this article. So I want to try to use strings command. But command like

echo 'abc' | strings

does not work. Why? Thanks in advance.

I read the strings manual. But got no luck.

Answer 1

Read the manpage:

DESCRIPTION

For each file given, GNU strings prints the printable character sequences that are at least 4 characters long [...]

Note the 4...

To make it work:

echo abc |strings -n 3