Re: Disassembler

Alistair wrote:
Reading in comp.lang.asm370 I came across the following item which may
be of some interest:

<QUOTE>

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:54:57 -0500, Gilbert Saint-Flour wrote:
<usenet5...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I found this page by accident a moment ago:
http://patents.nimblewisdom.com/patent/5946484-Method-of-recovering-source-code-from-object-code

It's a patent issued in 1999 by the USPTO for a disassembler, which
wasn't a
new concept back then (I've written my first disassembler in 1982).


The problem is that the language of patents is so arcane that it's
difficult
to spot the original elements of this patent, or if there's any
originality
in it at all. Hopefully, one of you will dig something up.



It appears to be more than just a dissassembler, based on the generated

assembly code it looks for known patterns charateristic of the IBM
Cobol
compiler and attempts to symthesize the Cobol source, as nearly as I
can
tell in 5 minutes. But this has been done for many years, I am not
sure
what is novel here.

</QUOTE>

Perhaps there will soon be an answer to the perennial "Where can I find
a cobol disassembler?"

This is not your typical disassembler. ["DisASSEMBLER" is probably a misleading term.] If you look carefully, you will see that the patent owner is Source Recovery Company. They turn executable code into _COBOL_source_. That's a simplified description. They also will use your variable names in the generated source if you provide record definitions. It is quite an effective technology. I've never heard of anyone else claiming to be able to do this.
.