I came across a nifty linux command (strings) recently and wanted to boost the volume. It's super helpful for filtering out non-human-readable (binary) content from from a file.

For example, I reviewing a Vim swap file containing php content and the output looked like:

(don't worry - this isn't actual data. It's a fictitious lab exercise file)

See the extra content cluttering up the view? The data is relevant for vim recovery but that's not always reliable. Let's see how it looks after running strings <filename>:

Neato! Much more readable.