Decompile an executable created through perl2exe

mithunkarthik2020 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Perl Monks, I am new to Perl and have taken over some of the support for Perl code. I have many executables which were created many years back and it does not have source code. I am running into support issues and the person coded it is no longer associated with our organization. I went through several forums and some say that we can retreive source by converting the exe to .zip and then unzip to get modules and some are pointing to http://www.thice.nl/perl2exe-back-to-perl-2014/ where the exe is being pulled in assembly coding and extract the main.pl however if there are associated pm or functions or subroutines I am not able to extract it. is there a way we get back the modeule/subroutines from the exe which was created by PERL2EXE. Any help or insight to get the source code back is appreciated. Thanks, Mithun

Comment on Decompile an executable created through perl2exe

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Re: Decompile an executable created through perl2exe by harangzsolt33 (Deacon) on Aug 06, 2020 at 06:05 UTC
Well, if you look into Perl2Exe's documentation, it says that it gives you the option to include certain modules in the output Exe file. However, this is not done by default. So, Perl2Exe includes the perl source code of the main program and the perl interpreter. But it does not include the modules unless it is specifically told to. Source: http://www.indigostar.com/pxman.html - look for string "#perl2exe_include modulename"	[reply]
Re^2: Decompile an executable created through perl2exe by bliako (Abbot) on Aug 06, 2020 at 09:02 UTC
Using the equivalent of Linux's `strace` for your OS will tell you what files (=external perl modules, text) are read during runtime and you will find whether said modules are external to the exe or are also included in the exe and you need to adjust the method in order to extract them too. EDIT: just had a look at the comments of the link you cited and there is a similar case where more than "main" needs to be extracted.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Decompile an executable created through perl2exe by Anonymous Monk on Aug 07, 2020 at 21:37 UTC
Thank you for your response. I am writing an disassembly code to crack this. I will let you know if I am able to do so.	[reply]
Re^3: Decompile an executable created through perl2exe by mithunkarthik2020 (Initiate) on Aug 07, 2020 at 21:38 UTC
Edit : Thank you for your response. I am writing an disassembly code to crack this. I will let you know if I am able to crack it. BTW it is me the original question poster.	[reply]