Find Programming Language Used

Question

Whats the easiest way to find out what programming language an application was written in? I would like to know if its vb or c++ or delphi or .net etc from the program exe file.

Answer 1

Start it up and check what run-time DLLs it uses with Process Explorer.

If that doesn't make it immediately obvious, search the web for references to those DLLs.

Most disassemblers (including Olly I think) can easily show you the text contained in an EXE or DLL, and that can also sometimes give a clue. Delphi types are often prefixed with T as in TMyClass.

If it's a small executable with no DLL references and no text you might be SOL. At that point you'd need to look for idioms of particular compilers, and it would be mostly guesswork.

Answer 2

If I remember correctly PE Explorer Disassembler gives some information about compiler that creates given not .net and java binary, for .net use Reflector or ILDAsm tool