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 Forums >>  IDA Pro  >>  IDA Plugin: Strings window

Topic created on: November 29, 2007 04:58 CST by DualReality .

I'm working on an IDA plugin for discovering PIC code. During the process of this, new strings are created. The only problem is it would nice if the list in the strings window could be refreshed with these new strings. As it stands now, the only way to do this is to close and re-open the database or close and re-open the strings window.

Is it at all possible to close and re-open the Strings window in a plugin? Or refresh the list without closing it? It's easy enough to close it using find_tform() and close_tform(). It's re-opening it that is the problem.

  cseagle     November 29, 2007 10:58.10 CST
How about:

// Refresh the string list
idaman void ida_export refresh_strlist(ea_t ea1, ea_t ea2);

in strlist.hpp?

  DualReality   November 29, 2007 14:39.01 CST
I had tried using refresh_strlist() before without success, but I guess I wasn't using it correctly. I've managed to figure it out now. Thank you.

  igorsk     November 30, 2007 06:43.05 CST
A good idea is to share the solution if you figured it out yourself, so others would be able to use it.

  DualReality   November 30, 2007 07:21.26 CST
Sorry about that.

Since I'm doing my plugin for ELF x86 binaries at the moment, I just took the beginning and ending addresses of the .rodata segment and used those as the arguments for refresh_strlist().

segment_t *rodata = get_segm_by_name(".rodata");
refresh_strlist(rodata->startEA, rodata->endEA);


It didn't immediately refresh like I thought it would, but after clicking on one of the columns in the Strings window, it did. It's not perfect, I guess, but it's better than what I had been doing.

  cseagle     November 30, 2007 21:39.02 CST
One more thing.  You mention in your original post that you are creating new strings.  Does this mean you are patching new content into the database that you want displayed as strings, or are you simply recognizing additional strings that IDA did not originally make into strings.  If the latter, you might consider checking the "Ignore instructions/data definitions" option in your strings setup options.  When you do that, the strings window will show strings that are not necessarily formatted as such in the disassembly window, and you should not need to refresh at all.  A side effect is that you will have a lot more junk strings as well.

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