Visual Basic Decompiter

[Intrepid]

Does anyoune know where I can get a decompiler for
visual basic 6, I know there are decompilers for vb 3
but I haven't seen anything for 6.
I rember a while back a company called AshSoft released
one but they went bankrupt or something and there hasn't
been anything since.
I would like something that decomplies directly back to
the source, although this was often claimed impossible it
was once in existance, so if anyone knows the location
of such a program it would be great.
Thankyou.

[andrewas]

Unfotunately, VB programs are not compiled to machine code, they are compiled to a byte code which is run by an interpreter. And the byte code is unpublished. I have seen efforts to make a VB5 compiler, but the only successful one isnt available any more. I wouldn't expect to see a VB6 one in the near future if at all.

Even if there was one, it wouldn't compile back to very pleasant source. All comments, variable and function names, informative formatting and everything that makes the code human readable would be gone. It could be disentangled, but unless its your own code it would be difficult.

[Intrepid]

Originally posted by andrewas: Unfotunately, VB programs are not compiled to machine code, they are compiled to a byte code which is run by an interpreter. And the byte code is unpublished. I have seen efforts to make a VB5 compiler, but the only successful one isnt available any more. I wouldn't expect to see a VB6 one in the near future if at all. Even if there was one, it wouldn't compile back to very pleasant source. All comments, variable and function names, informative formatting and everything that makes the code human readable would be gone. It could be disentangled, but unless its your own code it would be difficult.

Do you remember the name of or the company who made the VB5 decompiler?
Yeah I agree, the decompiled source would be extremly messy, but I do remember AshSoft's program, of course as you say the comments are gone etc. But still it actually did work (to the extent of almost being legible).

[LennonCook]

Since VB is semi-structured (ie, whitespace matters to a certain extent), the broken formatting wouldn't actually be *that* bad... except that non-tabbed code is extremely annoying to read. But it would be nothing compared to, say, non-formatted C++...
Lack of comments could still be annoying... the last thing you want is to look at a large block of code and ask "well, why's that there?"... especially if they have something like Sub none()...

[andrewas]

Damnit. All that work on the post, and then the server eats it.

Anyway, I found some *partial* decompilers. I dont have a copy of VB to test with, but you might be able to get some working code out of them if you work at it.

http://decompiler.theautomaters.com seems to be about the best place on the net for this kind of thing.

[Intrepid]

Through that link you gave me (and lots of navigation through paged in many and varying languages) I finally foung two programs.
Exdec.exe
VBReformer.exe
the latter seems to work to an "extent" (althought this took many different downloads as it was suited to different versions of visual basic), but this "extent" was not much, only a few variables etc.
Everything else is utterly scrambled and un-readable, it also doesn't help that the decompiler is German itself so therefore even harder to use.
Thanks anyway for your help.

[Tobbin]

The only decompiler that I know of is VB Studio. You can disassemble a program and edit it. Then you can recompile it when you are done. The disassembled program will be somewhat different than the original, because it is "compressed" and some of the sloppy code is tightened. There are no comments and randomized variables are created. Still, it can make code easier to work with if you don't have the source file anymore. The other benefit to VB Studio is that it can cross port the software into other type of code too (Visual C, Visual Java, etc.) It's a bit costly if you don't already have it though. Microsoft states the retail around 1200 or so.