Why convert SO to TXT?
A .so begins with a 4-byte ELF magic header and consists of binary segments - machine instructions, symbol tables, relocation data, and metadata sections. None of this is text, and there is no document content to extract. There is no structural relationship between a compiled ELF library and a .txt plain-text file.
How to convert SO to TXT
GNU Binutils OPEN-SOURCE
Run nm -D lib.so > output.txt for exported symbols, readelf -a lib.so > output.txt for ELF structure, objdump -d lib.so > output.txt for disassembly, or strings lib.so > output.txt for embedded human-readable strings.
Ghidra FREE
Import the .so into Ghidra to decompile the machine code into approximate C pseudocode, which you can export or save as text for deeper analysis.
About these formats
.SO
Shared Object (ELF shared library)
A .so file is a shared object library on Linux and Unix - the Linux equivalent of a Windows .dll. Programs load it automatically at run time; you never open it directly. If an app fails…
Open .SO details →
.TXT
Plain Text File
A TXT file is plain, unformatted text - the simplest document format on any computer. Double-click it: Windows opens it in Notepad, macOS in TextEdit, Linux in gedit. Nothing to install. If…
Open .TXT details →Quality & what to watch
- Opening a
.soin a text editor shows garbage characters - the bytes are binary ELF machine code, not encoded text. - The output of Binutils tools is inspection data, not a format conversion - the
.soremains a binary library regardless of what you dump to text. - If you need the original source code, the
.sois the compiled output; find the source on the project's repository, not inside the binary.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't I just rename the `.so` to `.txt`?
Is there any tool that converts SO to TXT?
xxd lib.so on the command line.
