Comparisons of PowerPC disassembly and decompilation
Here are some side-by-side comparisons of disassembly and decompiler for PowerPC. Please maximize the window too see both columns simultaneously.
The following examples are displayed on this page:
Simple code
This simple function calculates the sum of the squares of the first N natural numbers. While the function logic is obvious by just looking at the decompiler output, the assembly listing has too much noise and requires studying it. The decompiler saves your time and allows you to concentrate on more exciting aspects of reverse engineering.
Linear execution
The PowerPC processor has a number of instructions which can be used to avoid branches (for example cntlzw). The decompiler restores the conditional logic and makes code easier to understand.
64-bit comparison
64-bit comparison usually involves several compare and branch instructions which do not improve the code readability.
System calls
System call is always mysterious, but decompiler helps you with its name and arguments.
Compiler helpers
Compiler sometime uses helpers and decompiler knows the meaning of the many helpers and uses it to simplify code.
Floating point arithmetic
The PowerPC processor contains a number of complex floating point instructions which perform several operations at once. It is not easy to recover an expression from the assembler code but not for the decompiler.
Magic multiplication/division operations
Compilers can decompose a multiplication/division instruction into a sequence of cheaper instructions (additions, shifts, etc). This example demonstrates how the decompiler recognizes them and coagulates back to the original operation.
VLE code
This example demonstrates that the decompiler can handle VLE code without problems.
Interactive decompiler
The pseudocode is not something static because the decompiler is interactive the same way as IDA. You can change variable types and names, change function prototypes, add comments and more. The example above presents the result after these modifications.
Surely the result is not ideal, and there is a lot of room for improvement, but we hope that you got the idea.
And you can compare the result with the original: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/fs/fat/namei_msdos.c#L224