Intercomputer Transportation of Assembly Language Software through Decompilation.
Abstract
Portability of assembly language software can be achieved in a practical way only through the use of automated translators. The fact that translation between two representations at the same semantic level is a clumsy and difficult task has frustrated the development of such technology. This clumsiness stems from the fundamental differences in the architectural structures of different machines. In its simplest form, the translation process actually becomes the process of simulating one machine or another. The goal of such translation, however, should be the generation of assembly language code for the target machine that approximates, in efficiency and in appearance, code written to perform the same task by a 'good' assembly language programmer in the target language. A translator that performs a decompilation of the source program into an intermediate representation at a higher semantic level is described. Code in the target assembly language can later be generated from this intermediate representation. This translation scheme is shown to remove most of the machine dependency from assembly language software. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 15, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA107645
Entities
People
- Donald L. Brinkley
Organizations
- Naval Underwater Systems Center