Hi, > > I have in the past tried at disassemble Qlib and Turbo complied > programmes, but quite hard when they are not written in an assembler.
Yup! I very dimly remember that there even was (one or several?) program(s) that used compiled basic progs as part of the copy protection. > Could Turbo compiled code be de-compiled and the resultant object code > be then run through a Turbo re-translator to reconstruct the SuperBasic > source code, as source code to Turbo is available and we know how the > Turbo libraries work (maybe)? Probably George Gwilt is best suited to answer that. I believe, though, that it won't be a trivial task. In many cases I assume that the compiler uses some kind of template (i.e. for this instruction, use that code) and, when detecting these templates, you could reconstruct the source code for them. OTOH, think of all the possible ways of using PRINT..... What about using external keywords bound into the program? > This maybe good of great benefit to development programme to created > which could yield the source code of older programmes that do not run on > modern systems. > This presumes that the code generating engines stayed the same during the different versions of the compilers - is this a safe assumption to make? > How would this affect copyrighted compiled programmes? Good question. Generally speaking that kind of reverse engineering could get yuo into trouble. > On the Amiga there is a programme called ReSource, which allows > reverse decompilation of compiled programmes. Easier on there as the > OS uses known libraries... Hmmm, I faintly remember that program, but wasn't that program just a disassembler? Wolfgang _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
