Decompiling Perl

[melban]

I've got a compiled perl program that I need to change but the person who put it all together no longer works here and I have no way of contacting him. Is there any good sure fire way to decompile this file so that I may get it to working right?

Thanks
Shelby
smelban@inb.net

 

[MikeLacey]

compiled with what? Mike
________________________________________________________________

"Experience is the comb that Nature gives us, after we are bald."

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

 

[melban]

I don't know what it was compiled with. I guess a good question would be what programs are out there to compile a script with too.

Thanks
Shelby

 

[sleipnir214]

My Linux perl distribution comes with a program perlcc, which can take a perl program and generate a standalone executable. However, to quote the perlcc man page: "The code generated in this way is not guaranteed to work. The whole codegen suite ("perlcc" included) should be considered very experimental. Use for production purposes is strongly discouraged."

Decompilation of a program is extremely problematic. With modern compilers' automatic optimizing of code, anything that comes out of a decompiler is usually very difficult to wade through.

I strongly recommend that you reverse engineer the program's functionality and rewrite -- you'll probably be effort ahead in the long run. ______________________________________________________________________
TANSTAAFL!

 

[tviman]

I'd hazard to guess that your script is written in C. I'd also venture that somewhere the source code is handing around, too. Look for files with a .c extension either on your server or on the machine the your ex-employee used. Might even check any back-up tapes/discs. There's always a better way...