is there any software that gives you souce from .exe programs?
jan1024188 7 Posting Whiz in Training
WaltP 2,905 Posting Sage w/ dash of thyme Team Colleague
No. Once compiled the source code cannot be retrieved.
jan1024188 7 Posting Whiz in Training
but why?
~s.o.s~ 2,560 Failure as a human Team Colleague Featured Poster
but why?
Probably because of the way in which the object file is generated from the source file...
The actual C / C++ source code goes thorough a lot of transformations and platform specific optimizations during its compilation and building phase which make the source code from the object file to be retrieved almost impossible.
jan1024188 7 Posting Whiz in Training
AM....thanks sos...
Mushy-pea 36 What, you can change this tag?
There are some applications whose developers claim can (in some cases) retrieve a C - like representation of the original source from a .exe file. It is generally believed that reverse compilation of 3rd level languages is difficult bacause there may not always be a one to one mapping between source and compiled binary. It is certainly impossible to retrieve C++ code from a .exe because all class structures are thrown away before the binary is produced.
Steven.
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
Assembly on the other hand, can be disassembled fairly easily from an executable because it's so low-level. Java is also very easy to decompile; you can get almost an exact replica of the original source code if you run it through a decompiler because it's only compiled to bytecode.
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