strings command gives : No such file error
From man strings:
NAME
strings - print the strings of printable characters in files.
A C source code file consists entirely of printable characters, so strings test.c prints it verbatim. On the other hand, there is no file in the directory named simply test (without the .c suffix).
Perhaps you expected there to be an executable file named test, built from the source code file test.c? If so, you can try to build it with
make test
or
gcc -o test test.c
If that succeeds, try strings test again.