The default is to use UTF-16LE, which should work with recent versions
of Windows.
+=cut
+
+my $unsafe_printable_strings;
+
+=item B<--unsafe-printable-strings>
+
+When exporting (only), assume strings are UTF-16LE and print them as
+strings instead of hex sequences. Remove the final zero codepoint
+from strings if present.
+
+This is unsafe and does not preserve the fidelity of strings in the
+original Registry for various reasons:
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Assumes the original encoding is UTF-16LE. ASCII strings and strings
+in other encodings will be corrupted by this transformation.
+
+=item *
+
+Assumes that everything which has type 1 or 2 is really a string
+and that everything else is not a string, but the type field in
+real Registries is not reliable.
+
+=item *
+
+Loses information about whether a zero codepoint followed the string
+in the Registry or not.
+
+=back
+
+This all happens because the Registry itself contains no information
+about how strings are encoded (see
+L<Win::Hivex::Regedit(3)/ENCODING STRINGS>).
+
+You should only use this option for quick hacking and debugging of the
+Registry contents, and I<never> use it if the output is going to be
+passed into another program or stored in another Registry.
+
=back
=cut
"format=s" => \$format,
"merge" => \$merge,
"encoding=s" => \$encoding,
+ "unsafe-printable-strings" => \$unsafe_printable_strings,
) or pod2usage (2);
pod2usage (1) if $help;
if ($version) {
unless ($name) {
# Export it.
warn "exporting $path from $hivename with prefix $prefix ..." if $debug;
- reg_export ($h, $path, \*STDOUT, prefix => $prefix);
+ reg_export ($h, $path, \*STDOUT,
+ prefix => $prefix,
+ unsafe_printable_strings => $unsafe_printable_strings);
} else {
# Export a single key using hivexget.
my @args = ("hivexget", "$tmpdir/$hivename", $path, $name);