viewing source code

Alexander

Well-known
Paid Member
How does view the source code of a EXE program? I am not sure what program language it is, but it manipulates TGA (Targa) images. Opening it in Notepad gives some text, but shows mostly garbage.

Alexander
Board of Directors
Lincolns of Distinction
 
RE: viewing source code

An executable file (binary) is not source code, it is compiled or assembled code. A complied or assembled program is in machine language and not readable by humans.
 
RE: viewing source code

Is it possible to decompile it?

Alexander
Board of Directors
Lincolns of Distinction
 
RE: viewing source code

There are decompilers out there, you would have to know the language it was compiled or assembled in. Most commercial software uses safeguards against reverse engineering their code. Even when developers do have the source code it is not always easy to decipher someone else work.
 
RE: viewing source code

I would ask the developer of the program if he could give me the source code, but the e-mial to him bounces back to me. He publishd the source code for his other programs , but not for this one. I want to understand how the program works, so that I may be able to write another program for another application.

Alexander
Board of Directors
Lincolns of Distinction
 
RE: viewing source code

There are forums and sites online specifically for this purpose. The one i go to http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php is mainly for automation and distribution of windows OS and windows based programs because that's what my side job is. This may or may not help but someone on that forum developed a tool AutoIt which is programed with simple understandable commands for mimicing keystrokes, mouse movement etc. Let me know what you want your program to do and AutoIt can probably make existing programs do the same work for you!

IE: I have 2000 .jpg files which i want reindexed into 8bit .bmp
MSPaint is a wonderful tool but doing all 2000 by hand would suck and it has no batch feature, but with AutoIt I can type out a few lines of code and it will do 2000 without user input.
 
RE: viewing source code

[div class="dcquote"][strong]Quote[/strong]IE: I have 2000 .jpg files which i want reindexed into 8bit .bmpMSPaint is a wonderful tool but doing all 2000 by hand would suck and it has no batch feature, but with AutoIt I can type out a few lines of code and it will do 2000 without user input.
[/div]

Now That's COOL:)
AutoIt? Is it vb..?
 
RE: viewing source code

From http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/index.php

"AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys). AutoIt is also very small, self-contained and will run on 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003 out of the box with no annoying "runtimes" required! You can even make compiled executable scripts that can run without AutoIt being installed!"
 
RE: viewing source code

There is a lot of interesting information on that message board. Thanks for the link.

Alexander
Board of Directors
Lincolns of Distinction
 
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