Decompiling dbase app

[stratcat]

A friend uses an old dbase app and does not
have the .prg file. Is there any way to decompile
the .exe? The sales tax is wrong and whoever wrote
and compiled the prog died.

 

[1oldfoxman]

There probably are tools to do the reverse compile. I am not familiar with any personally. I would suggest you look for any .MEM files in the application directory. This is a file where memory variables and their values can be saved in dBase. If I were writing such an application, I would save a parameter like sales tax rate (which might change over long periods of time) in a variable saved to a file. If you don't have the dBase application to modify the variable value, I have had good luck simply changing the variable value by opening the file in Notepad.

Maybe you'll get lucky and that's how the sales tax value was handled, as opposed to being hardcoded in the .PRG.

 

[ormsk]

Hi

I am pretty sure it cannot be done.

Before a .EXE file is created, the .dbo files are used. When a .dbo file is created by dbase, variables and segments of code are converted to values
e.g. original code may have an expression of:
nAvar = 3+4
but dBase will convert this to 7
so something could be lost in the process

Also all comments are stripped when creating the .dbo

Hope this hasn't pissed on your bonfire. Good luck with the search.!

 

[ohmslaw]

When you compile a *.prg file in dbase IV it creates a *.dbo file what do you need to create an exe file and where can I get the program to do this?