Reverse engineering a applescript.app

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Level 2

470 points

Reverse engineering a applescript.app

Hello all

If I write an applescript, and save it only as run only application, how easy is it for someone to reverse engineer (ie copy my hours of work!) the script I have written.

I have tried from the terminal
strings /path/to/my/script.app

and I get this error
_dyld_mod_termfuncs
_dyld_make_delayed_module_initializercalls
The kernel support for the dynamic linker is not present to run this program.

Is this a problems specific to my computer, or can they get the text from my scripts very easily using strings or some other sort of reverse engineer trickery?

Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jul 15, 2006 3:04 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 15, 2006 5:17 PM in response to Ang Moh

You might read this on exactly your topic:

http://macscripter.net/articles/4290_10_0C/

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Answer 2

Cyclosaurus

Level 6

12,915 points

Jul 15, 2006 6:22 PM in response to Ang Moh

As NovaScotian post pointed out:

Yes, but it isn't worth the effort. It would take too much time for a regular programmer.

It's also depend on the scope of your app. I recently wrote an Installer for iWeb templates.
I don't want anyone to package their templates in my Installer (and use it without permissions), so I have the template designer embed key code (of my choosing) in the templates.
So even if someone get my source code, it still won't work unless they know how to generate the key code.

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