Re: In search of the perfect Disassembler



Bertrand Augereau wrote:
> I did some research on the web about this Betov and now I think I
> understand what we are facing here...

Hopefully, it didn't take *too* much research. Most people figure it
out by the second or third post of his :-)

>
>
> > For the longest time, Rene was claiming that 100% automatic (and
> > perfect) disassembly was possible and RosAsm was going to do that.
> > This, despite the fact that several people around here pointed out that
> > disassembly reduces to the halting problem (which is unsolvable).
>
> Well, maybe he has solved the halting problem!
> Didn't you consider this possibility?
> Betov kicks Gödel's ass badly!

Certainly, there have been some posts where Rene (Betov) has tried to
kick "Donkey" (an inside joke from the MASMForum site; "Donkey" being a
moniker of someone who, for example, pointed out the nonsense about
Rene's claims that he wrote a custom edit tool for RosAsm).



>
> Yes I know about this but I often regretted than the wonderful IDA
> wasn't at least even trying to dump a MASM-assemblable with binary
> sections inside, because it would have worked for me in some occurences
> (of course a bit of TXL or a plugin can do the trick)

And I think this latter comment is exactly Data Rescue's point. If you
want something that's syntactically compatible with the assembler that
you use (MASM or otherwise), just write a plug-in.


>
>
> > Also note: when Rene announces that his disassembler is complete, I'll
> > be able to break it in about two minutes. It's not hard to confuse an
> > automatic disassembler.
>
> It's not hard to confuse a programmer either :)

True, but the programmer can go over it again and again, trying
different things until they get it right. A one-shot automatic
disassembler, of course, only gets one shot at it.


>
> >
> > Actually, a discussion of PS2 VU instruction scheduling and MIPS 5900
> > cache prefetching is a totally appropriate subject to discuss around
> > here (and many people would find it interesting). Far more appropriate
> > than most of Rene's (Betov's) points.
>
> Yuck, are you an insane pervert, Randy? I only do this stuff to be paid!
> (and I'm not doing it anymore :) )
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bertrand

Well, it would *still* be more on-topic than most of Rene's rants
around here. Perverse is Rene's definition(s) of what is and what is
not an assembler. Perverse is all the words he makes up (like
"preparser", whatever that is). And most of all, perverse is attempting
to claim that assembly language programmers don't use library code or
static linking, but instead write monolithic applications (one source
file) and use cut and paste to achieve what libraries do for everyone
else. *THAT'S* perverse.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Asm For Nerds
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