Decompile Ada .exe Files?

Decompile Ada .exe Files?

[Aaron]

Hello.

Is it possible to decompile a .EXE file that was written in Ada 95
back to it's original code?

Thanks for your help.

Re: Decompile Ada .exe Files?

[Robert Dewar]

In article <3748db50.1017767@news.ozemail.com.au>,
  rum_and_cola@hotmail.com (Aaron) wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Is it possible to decompile a .EXE file that was written in
> Ada 95 back to it's original code?


No, and the answer would be no for almost any other language
substituted for Ada 95 there. Far too much information has
been lost, in particular the executable does not contain
any comments for a start.



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Re: Decompile Ada .exe Files?

[Ronald Cole]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> writes:
> In article <3748db50.1017767@news.ozemail.com.au>,
>   rum_and_cola@hotmail.com (Aaron) wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > Is it possible to decompile a .EXE file that was written in
> > Ada 95 back to it's original code?
> 
> No, and the answer would be no for almost any other language
> substituted for Ada 95 there. Far too much information has
> been lost, in particular the executable does not contain
> any comments for a start.

Probably a good thing, too.  I remember reverse compiling the UCSD
p-System from the p-Code in my energetic youth.  Just threw away a
boxful of it that I had kept for nearly 15 years in my garage.

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Re: Decompile Ada .exe Files?

[Tom Moran]

>Is it possible to decompile a .EXE file that was written in Ada 95
>back to it's original code?
No, the comments are surely gone, and unless you have a debugable exe,
the variable and procedure names are gone.  If your compiler produces
certain standard code sequences for certain constructs, those can be
detected and translated to the original construct.  See "Machine
Independent Computer Programming" by Halstead for discussion of an
early 1960's decompiler.  There's been more recent research, I recall
someone in Australia did a thesis on decompilers.  Search the
Internet.

Re: Decompile Ada .exe Files?

[Gautier]

> Is it possible to decompile a .EXE file that was written in Ada 95
> back to it's original code?

No. If symbol table is attached and no optimization performed, you could
be able to understand what happens in the program. E.g. Borland Pascal
.EXEs are so unoptimized that it can be easy to retrieve instructions;
reversely, good luck if you have an -O2 optimized, with inline pragmas,
GNAT .EXE !

A good pointer: http://www.csee.uq.edu.au/csm/decompilation/disasm.html

-- 
Gautier

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