I recently accidentally submitted my .class file instead of the .java file for an assignment.
After feedback from the grader, I submitted my .java file. Everything worked out fine from there, the grader trusted that it was an honest mistake.
However, is there a simple way for the grader to check to see if the two files really match up?
So far, I've only thought of two solutions:
Compile the .java, and see if the .class outputted is identical/very similar. This is probably very compiler dependant. If the compilers were the same, are there other variables that would make the .class different?
Decompile the .class file, and do a character comparison. This seems like a lot more work, and probably match the .java file even less than solution 1.
Is there a reliable way to check this?
If you compile with the exact same compiler in the exact same enviornment, it is highly likely that you will get identical class files.
However, if there are variations in compiler or platform, you should look at this discussion.
Outside of that, you will probably have to evaluate it functionally. That is, write a test class that exercises all desired behaviors of each class and check whether they all return identical results.
I did a very simple test and it worked for me..
I compiled a simple java program and created its .class file
Then I just change one letter inside System.out.println and again crated a .class file
Then used diff command in linux and it tells me that two binary files are different
So I think instead of decompiling the .class file and then checking both .java files you can directly check for two .class files
At least it worked for me.
Hope this helps!
Related
it's been a while since i've been working with java and especially with eclipse. My professor sent me a huge folder with many subfolders and subsubfolders, that mainly contain .class java files. Now I'm supposed to work on these files, but i just can't seem to figure out how to get all of them working. I found a few solutions for single class files, but i have a whole folder hirarchy here that i want to work on.
I hope you can help me - I read something about decompiling? How does that work?
Note that I have around 50 different files here that need to be accessible.
Thank you very much!
I suppose the class you are attending is not something like "CS 902 - Reverse Engineering", because if that was the case, you would know what to do with the .class files.
So, one of the following holds true:
Your professor has made a mistake, and instead of sending you the java files, he/she sent you the class files instead.
Your professor sent you the entire project, which contains both .java and .class files, and for some reason you have only managed to find the .class files, while the .java files are there, and you just haven't found them. Unfortunately, the convention in the java world is to store .class files in a subfolder under the project root, so if you copy the project folder, you are copying .class files together with everything else.
Your assignment is to write new code which makes use of classes and interfaces supplied by your professor, but your professor does not want you to have the source code of those files. In this case, you can still work with the .class files, because the public definitions contained therein are parseable by Eclipse and usable in your project, without any reverse engineering. So, what you need to do is to find a way to tell eclipse that these .class files form a "Class Library" which is supposed to be used by your project, and then go ahead and develop new .java files making use of the library. I don't remember how this is done in Eclipse, but you should be able to find it out by yourself, or look it up, or perhaps someone else might post a how-to answer. However, at this point we do not even know whether this is in fact what you need to do.
You can use a java decompiler like JD-GUI, you can find it at http://jd.benow.ca/ . This is a very handy tool to have when you want to view a decompiled version of your jar. There are plugins available for eclipse and intellij as well.
I deleted a Java project from my hard disk in an attempt to do some refactoring with Eclipse. Luckily I found a recent version of an Executable Jar File and decrompressed it into a bunch of .class files.
I've read some 'decompiling' threads on SO and tried showmycode.com, but I was hoping for more. Isn't it possible to convert .class files into the .java files that made them, comments included - nothing changed? Or find the in the .jar file? What are my best options if not? Other answers on the topic seem outdated. Do I need to download software?
You will not be able to get your comments back, they are lost when you go from .java to .class. As to how to do it any "Java Decompiler" can do it, your code will not be exactly what you wrote, however the code you get back will be functionally the same as what you originally wrote.
JD is a decompiler I have used before and have been happy with its output.
We have normal java files residing in the SVN. We have made some changes in those files , but it happens that , those files are lost (they are not in SVN). But we have the class files that are generated using the newly changed files.
Can we use the class files , decompile them and compare it against SVN. What is the easiest way to do it?
There are about 400 changed files. So comparing one by one is not feasible.
I am looking for any tool or scripts.
Also is there any decompiler , that would decompile a whole folder at one go?
Thanks
For decompiling use JAD, most commonly used tool. Comparing is a bit tricky though. I would suggest the following scenario:
Grab the latest source code from SVN
Build it
Decompile it (!)
Take your compiled classes that include some modifications but you don't have sources
Decompile them as well
Compare both decompiled sources directories
Why compiling and decompiling the original source codes? Because JAD produces pretty good results, but it will never generate the exact same sources that were used. So if you want to avoid headaches when comparing original sources and decompiled ones (and pinpoint the actual differences quickly), you have to compare two JAD outputs rather than original source and synthetic JAD output.
I hope having two directory structures to compare won't be a problem for you. You can use Total Commander on Windows or various utilities/scripts on Linux, like:
$ diff -r dir1 dir2
jad can decompile a whole folder but the result depends on a couple of factors. First, JAD only supports Java 4 well. Java 5 and up will contain odd byte code chunks that JAD didn't understand.
If the code is compiled with debug symbols, you can realign line numbers (the jadclipse plugin can do that) but JAD itself can't do it.
If you compiled the code with -g:source, then the class files contain the complete source code. At first glance, I don't know how to get at this but tools like javap (comes with the JDK) or ASM should allow you to get it.
It is possible to compare a decompiled source file with the orginal, provided you did not use obfuscation when generating class files. However, automated comparison will be difficult because the decompiled source is often slightly different than the original source due to compiler optimization for example.
Personally I use jad as a decompiler, but I'm not sure you can provide it with a whole folder at one go.
I used the below command(jad decompiler) to compile all the class files in a folder in one go.
jad -o -r -sjava -dsrc tree/**/*.class
Use jd-gui, very good decompiler, but the compering ... its going to be painful.
Right now im doing exactly that, using http://java.decompiler.free.fr/ to decompile and beyond compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/) to compare packages and files. It looks like a great idea to make a fast compare against the actual version (svn) compiled and decompiled, to check which files (and which sections) are up to date.
I was unfortunately forced to result to uploading a WAR file as my backup for a web application I am working on.
Luckily I have the most recent WAR file available. I am using Eclipse IDE and am using the Web Tools plugin for all the J2EE work that I am doing with the Dynamic Web Application Project.
When I imported my WAR file, and ran it on a local server, everything works fine. The problem I a ran into is that in the Java Resources/src folder that all my packages and .java files were now only consists of all the same packages, but they are empty.
I checked to see if I could find the files and I found the .class files in an "Imported files" folder that is not accessible in the Eclipse Project Explorer. I believe that I need to do some type of build or something so that my .java files are available for me, but unfortunately this is one area where I lack.
One thing I would also like to know is, one way or the other, am I able to obtain the .java source code files if I have access to the .class files?
Also, I would like to configure this environment as it was before where my Java Resources:src folder contaiend the packages and .java files.
One thing I would also like to know is, one way or the other, am I able to obtain the .java source code files if I have access to the .class files?
The short answer is No. There is no way to regenerate original source files from bytecode files.
If you were really, really desperate you could try to use a Java bytecode decompiler on your bytecode files, but the result will be be nothing like your original source code.
All comments and javadocs will be gone.
All original code layout will be gone.
Original local variable and parameter names may be gone, depending on your original compiler switches.
Constant expressions may have been pre-evaluated, and loops, string concatenations and other constructs may have been transformed unrecognizably.
Depending on the maturity of the decompiler, the Java code might not be semantically equivalent to the original code, and might not even be compilable.
I hope you haven't spent too long developing this application because the best answer may be to start again.
Is it possible to convert a .class file to .java file?
How can this be done?
What about the correctness of the code extracted from this option?
It is possible. You need a Java Decompiler to do this.
You'll find mostly it'll do a surprisingly good job. What you'll get is a valid .java file which will compile to the .class file but this .java file won't necessarily be the same as the original source code. Things like looping constructs might come out differently, and anything that's compile time only such as generics and annotations won't be re-created.
You might have a problem if the code has been obfuscated. This is a process which alters the class files to make them hard to decompile. For example, class and variable names are changed to all be similar so you'll end up with code like aa.a(ab) instead of employee.setName(name) and it's very hard to work out what's going on.
I remember using JAD to do this but I don't think this is actively maintained so it may not work with never versions of Java. A Google search for java decompiler will give you plenty of options.
This is possible using one of the available Java decompilers. Since you are working from byte-code which may have been optimised by the compiler (inlining static variables, restructing control flow etc) what you get out may not be exactly the same as the code that was originally compiled but it will be functionally equivalent.
Adding to the previous answers: recently, a new wave of decompilers has been coming, namely Procyon, CFR, JD, Fernflower
Here's a list of modern decompilers as of March, 2015:
Procyon
CFR
JD
Fernflower
You may test above mention decompilers online, no installation required and make your own educated choice.
Java decompilers in the cloud: http://www.javadecompilers.com/
It is always possible. Search for "java disassembler".
But source code comments and temporary variables will not be available.
If you decompile a class and see the code is too complex with variable names and method names are like a,b,c... that means that the project is obfuscated.
Not exactly a decompiler, but the JDK contains javap, a disassembler:
javap -c org.example.MyClass
Depending on your usecase, it might still be interesting to know or use.
Note that results of class file decompilation depend on the included information within a class file. If I remember correctly, included debug information (see -g flag of javac) is important, especially for naming of variables and the like.
DJ is the easy to use java decompiler . Just open any .class file and it will show you its java code.
Also, you can use jadClipse plugin for eclipse to directly decompile the .class into .java
What about the correctness of the code extracted from this option?
In any case, the code which will be generated by any java decompiler will not be the same as it was written in orginal java class. As it just decodes the bytecode into java code. The only thing you can be sure is, that the output will be same as the output of orginal java code.