Re: Help on disassembler/decompilers

In article <6839.26ea3b0e@vax1.tcd.ie> rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie writes:
>There's no unique mapping from machine code to HLL and hence (unlike machine
>code to assembler) no simple algorithm (your algorithm might recognize
>something it thinks is a loop but is it a for loop, a while loop or just
>something hacked together with gotos? that's before you even think about what
>optimized machine code will look like). You could probably figure out a


There's no _unique_ mapping from HLL into assembler, or from assembler into
assembler for that matter, either! In _principle_ translation between
assembler and an HLL is no harder than the other way 'round. You can't even
say that "assembly language is close to the machine & you can do things in
it that you can't in HLLs" -- after all, assembly and HLL are both capable
of emulating Turning machines, right?


I have made various attempts at writing assemlber -> HLL translators over
the years, mostly inspired by the `beatify' tool that attempts to transform
spagetti FORTRAN into structured FORTRAN. A bit of graph thy is all that's
needed for __most_ of that.


I ultimately see such tools as pointless, however, in that they only
encourage the maintenance of ``dusty deck'' stuff (in a new prettier form)
-- re-inventing the wheel occasionally comes up with a better wheel!


-Kym Horsell
--

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