Strings is a groovy program that will go through a specified file and pull out the printable characters that are at least 4 characters long. It's very smart and useful and can be used to extract data from otherwise hopelessly destroyed files, like, say a dd copy of drive on which you've deleted many gigs of email by accident.

Strings are also an instrument group. Generally thought of to contain the violin, viola, cello, and bass, it also includes other instruments, like the harp and piano. Basically, if it has strings, it's a string instrument.