decompiling back to C++?

Give them a year.

They would failed.
But I think maybe scientists could do this job, with ten or more years.

Yeh, but what if those programmers were hired away from MS? What if they were the same programmers that wrote the C++ compiler in the first place? Maybe that would give them a edge; maybe they could do it in a year or less?

Sarge

I don't know, there are numerous optimizations which can result in totally throwing away the original source. Of course, this would also have the effect of optimizing the source, wouldn't it? But it would probably be much harder to read, and you wouldn't have comments anyway.

The problem is that converting back to C++ code doesn't really help you all that much, because you won't have comments, and you won't have variable names which make sense.

You will have constructs, and code flow.

But those you can still get from ASM disassemblers anyway (like IDA). Knowing the original high-level intent of the programmer (why something was done certain way, variable names, how variables connect to each other) in enough of a way to reconstruct a source is pretty much impossible. C++ really isn't a round trip language ( unlike .NET languages).

-Lunar

[SHaG]

Check:
hxxp://boomerang.sourceforge.net

true c++ code?
i wouldn't say impossible, but improbable.

decompilers will deal with the lost of code due to optimizations, and of course, the user-defined tokens (ex. variables, function names).

reusable code should be the target of decompilers, and until someone creates a program to analyze algorithms, and properly name all of the variables and functions, not to mention profiling the programmer on his/her preferences in the use of variables, we're still a long way to go before seeing the original code from a compiled sample.

[_Servil_]

it's impossible $10,000,000 is quite few.