Question

I have used reflector until its trial period ended

I have decoded many applications successfully. And by my recent post i was able to identify it can also decode delphi.net vcl apps (d2007).

Can i decode delphi.net vcl and translate it to a c# application which can be compiled success fully using visual studio.

Answer 1

The answer to the question Can i decode delphi.net vcl app and translate it to a c# application which can be compiled success fully using visual studio ? is No

This is the Why.

When you create a vcl net application using delphi (8), 2005, 2006 or 2007, the delphi compiler create an .NET application with a lot of dependencies to internal classes which are wrappers and helpers to call the real .net classes, these classes (wrappers) was created to facilitate the creation of .net applications to the existing delphi win32 developers.

Consider this sample.

This a delphi .net app

program DelphiNetConsole;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}    

uses
  SysUtils;    
begin
  try
    Writeln('Hello From Delphi 2007.Net');
  except
    on E:Exception do
      Writeln(E.Classname, ': ', E.Message);
  end;
end.

if you translate manually this code to C#

using System;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication8
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Hello From Delphi 2007.Net");
            }
            catch (System.Exception E)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(E.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

But using reflector you get this for the first snippet

public static void DelphiNetConsole()

{
    System.IsConsole = true;
    try
    {
        TextOutput.Output.WriteWideString("Hello From Delphi 2007.Net", 0).WriteLn();
        System.@_IOTest();
    }
    catch (Exception exception1)
    {
        Exception exception2 = System.@ExceptObject = exception1;
        Exception E = exception1;
        TextOutput.Output.WriteWideString(TObjectHelper.ClassName(System.@GetMetaFromObject(E)), 0).WriteWideString(": ", 0).WriteWideString(E.Message, 0).WriteLn();
        System.@_IOTest();
        System.@ExceptObject = null;
    }
}

As you can see the last code call a lot of helper classes and functions (like TextOutput) which are not part of the standard .net framework, rather they are part of the Borland.Delphi.System namespace.

Reflector can help you to translate some snippets of code but not the full application in an automated way.