Tuesday, August 23, 2005

can you obtain the C++ source file from the machine code?

i would want to know whether a person can obtain the source code of a c++
program , once he has only the executable with him. ????is that possible
?? as the m/c code is target machine dependent .i really want ot know the
answer to this question.
- maadhuu

6 Comments:

At 5:48 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And I would like to know whether a person can obtain the recipe of a dish, once he has only the finished dish in a restaurant.

 
At 5:49 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, de-compilers do that. However, the best de-compilers available
today do not seem to produce readable code, and that if they successfully de-compile code.

But yes, there are such tools available on the market. They are hardly effective though, and have several legal issues with them.

Reverse Engineering is tough job!

 
At 5:50 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

He asked about the source code of a C++ program. There is no program which will do what you claim. Despite the name, "de-compilers" do not de compile. They produce a very ugly version of assembly language code.

 
At 5:50 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do beautiful versions of assembly language code really exist? :)

 
At 5:50 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

> Do beautiful versions of assembly language code really exist? :)

Yes.

 
At 5:51 PM, August 23, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mathematically speaking, the compilation is *not* an isomorphism
between languages. It *cannot* exist any function that given a compiled
program (*) generates the corresponding original source code.

(*) Of course, you can cheat appending the original source code to the
binary, but it's not fair...

 

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