In all probability it will have been made into a exe with either Indigo Star's Perl2exe or ActiveState's PerlApp. Contrary to what Aristotle said the original source code is not stored internally in verbatim form. It is encoded. Some monks cracked PerlApp in public at A real challenge and then AS changed the encoding. So the encoding algorithms have changed over time, and thus the decode depends not only on which program was used but also which version. There are similar published decrypts on Perl2exe if you Google for them.

Of the free perl tools PAR does store the code verbatim but is unlikely to have been used based on timing and motivations. The B:: compiler backends basically don't work for anything past trivia so are very unlikely to have been used either.

It is almost certainly possible to retrieve the original source code. It is also almost certainly not worth the time and effort.

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: Perl Decompile by tachyon
in thread Perl Decompile by solitary

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.