3t$1@xivic.prima.de
From: Wolfgang.Schelongowski@gmx.de
Adam writes:
>Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
>> Adam writes:
>
>>> I gather decompiling (as opposed to disassembling) still involves a
>>> lot of guesswork.
>>
>> It did so last times I decompiled. A little bit of knowledge about
>> code generation and the linkage editor is necessary.
>
>I hadn't thought about library routines being linked in,
Neither had I. I'm was thinking about the production of the
relocatable code and what a linkage editor does with it. I'm not sure
how much that would have helped you.
> but at
>least I knew that it was compiled C and all parameters were passed
>on the stack.
Oh, obfuscated assembler has its uses, too. Oops, got tempted into
memory lane, again.
> Also, I didn't need to decipher the entire thing or
>recreate the C source, but just figure out certain parts of it and
>what certain bits of the input represented.
That simplifies it a bit.
>> In my misspent youth^W^W^WWhile studying physics
>
>Part of my misspent youth /was/ wasted in college "freshman
>physics". The course was so awful that it was one of the reasons I
>left that university, and I wasn't even a physics major! It was one
>of the very few times that a course was so bad that it killed any
>further interest I might have had in that field.
This reminds me of my mother and her last mathematics teacher.
He must have been incompetent both in mathematics and teaching.
OTOH I did have a mathematics teacher named Horsthemke I remember as
the best of all teachers, because he had more than adequate knowledge
and _he cared_. Before I started secondary education I was warned by
an elder kid from the neighbourhood that he were oh so horrible (he'd
have used the word "authoritarian" if it had been in common use
then). However, we got on rather nicely once he saw me shaking when he
delivered one of his philipics. "Why are _you_ scared? I'm addressing
_them_, not you." He also taught us that the teacher is _not_ always
right.
Contrast that with a German teacher who was known to award better
grades for essays which mentioned sweet Jesus etc., or a French
teacher who always came in with a lit cigar which he put on the
window-sill.
I had Mr. Horsthemke the first three years for math and the last
2.5 years both for math[1] and as class teacher. Before the final
exams he had to write a Beurteilung (judgement ?) which was mainly on
spot, although he didn't appear to know that I've been reading lots of
technical literature in English.
[seven least significant bits]
>> Oh no, there is eternal dissent between the honorable members of
>> the hex tribe and the heathen idol worshippers of the octal !!!11!
>
>Well, besides "n & 127" (in any base)
Only in decimal.
>Well, besides "n & 127" (in any base) which is what I think almost
>every C programmer would have used, there are numerous other
>(although less efficient) ways that a programmer /could/ get only
>the bottom seven bits of a byte:
...
IMAO "n & 127" is less clear than "n & 0x7F" or "n & 0177" because you
have to perform one additional step to understand what's meant.
(cough) "Meaning is in the mind of the beholder."
PS: If some of the above sounds somehow awkward or stilted it's
because I had to use a dictionary a lot.
PPS: We had elections for what you'd call state assembly/parliament
today. In some four hours we'll know if the pirates are in and
the ultra-neo-cons are out.
[1] During the three years in between I had somebody who was better
at math but not as good in hammering it into the ... uh, let's
say mathematically disadvantaged. He was also our physics teacher.
--
The first entry of Sin into the mind occurs when, out of cowardice or
conformity or vanity, the Real is replaced by a comforting lie.
-- Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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