Question

Is there any way to get the source code by using object file in C?

For example I have a source code simple.c

cc simple.c

Now I have a.out (object file). By this a.out whether can I get the source?

code of simple.c

Answer 1

There are many useful tools to retrieve information from your executable. None of them is able to give you back the original source code (as some other user pointed out, it’s impossible for C), but you can try some reverse engineering tools. My preferred one are:

• Objdump (part of the “binutils” package)
• hte (debian packages it as “ht”)

With the first one you can actually get all the exported symbols and their relative executable code in terms of assembly (obviously this is true only for the .text sections). The second one is aimed to work with intel architectures, but you will be able to analize every executable file and get information about the ELF sections and symbols.