[DUG] Program Exe information

[John Bird]

PEExplorer may be overkill as well as expensive for mere curiosity.

there are basic utilities (ported from Unix/Linux such as strings (shows 
strings in a binary file) and file

(An excellent port of file is at 
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/file.htm)

Background - unix/linux do not and never have used file extensions 
todetermine what kind of file they are - executable files can be identified 
by magic numbers - ie examining the data inside the file headers - including 
shell scripts etc).  There are excellent utilities in Unix for diagnosing 
what kind of file anything is.

for instance here is the info from the command file.exe on Skype.exe

file \Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe
\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe; PE32 executable for MS Windows (GUI) 
Intel
 80386 32-bit

this program can usually tell for instance the difference between text 
files, HTML, batch files, source files - it often hints what language it 
thinks a source file is.  Another example:

JBxxxx.dproj;     XML document text

I was hoping for a similar open source tool that might give info on 
compiler/linker signatures, not the full disassembly tools.



John
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeremy Coulter" <jscoulter at gmail.com>
To: "'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'" <delphi at delphi.org.nz>
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 1:46 PM
Subject: Re: [DUG] Program Exe information


>I generally use PEExporer , but you only really generally pick up on things