On Mon, 04 Jan 2021 22:23:14 +0000, gareth evans wrote:

>
> Somehow I think that we're not singing from the same hymn sheet.
>
There is an intermediate disassembler style that sits between a
traditional disassembler and the mythical AI disassembler: that is the
'semi-interactive' type I mentioned. Since I know of at least one of
these that is currently up and running I probably should have explained
it better, so here goes:

What I meant by this is a disassembler that initially generates an
assembly source file but doesn't just save it. Instead it shows that to
the user in an interactive, scrolling display which allows the user to
assign names to branch destinations, call targets and addresses of
variables, while simultaneously storing these in a symbol table, which is
also viewable, editable on screen and can be saved and later reloaded at
the start of a future session.

Most importantly, at any point you can rerun the disassembly, but this
time the disassembler will use the symbol table to include names in the
symbol table in its output. IOW, after you've added one or more
name/address pairs to the symbol table, rerunning the disassembler will
incorporate these into the new version of the disassembled source.
Working this way is obviously faster and less error-prone than saving the
first pass disassembler output and manually editing it.

For extra points the disassembler should be able to:

- start by reading a predefined symbol set that contains the OS API names
  and names of OS public variables.

- be configurable to search for and read in more than one symbol set.

- use a modified version of the symbol table editor to add comments that
  will appear as comment blocks in front of a nominated address or after
  the address content as a trailing content.

- generate a disassembled source file that can be assembled without
  needing further changes.


--
--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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