Convert labview exe back to labview vi?

[Karthikeyan 0]

Is it possible to convert labview exe back to labview vi?

Edited June 23, 2019 by Michael Aivaliotis
fixed the title.

[LogMAN 117]

No, that is not possible. Here is the official KB article from NI

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019LtOSAU&l=en-US

Edited June 17, 2019 by LogMAN

[ensegre 70]

This is also an informative post by Rolf about older versions.

[Aristos Queue 642]

Honestly, I have no idea if that’s something that is even logically possible. Computing data flow from procedural instructions is one of the holy grails of compiler optimization. Sure, there’s short segments that are easy to translate back, but a general app? Maybe, but I have 19 years of LabVIEW R&D experience with the compiler, and I’d be hard pressed to do it by hand, much less derive a general algorithm for automatic decompilation. 

[jcarmody 205]

[MikaelH 173]

Yes you can...if you did build the exe file with debugging on.

[hooovahh 714]

Pulling the VIs out of an EXE isn't the hard part.  In relatively recent versions of LabVIEW you can pull out VIs from an EXE.  I think the last version I did this on was 2015.  But the VIs are a binary blob with no block diagram, generally no front panel, but can be called as a subVI in the IDE.  And with the forward compatible run-time engine that means any LabVIEW 2017 EXE can have its VIs pulled out and ran in 2017 or newer.  I haven't tested this but I think it should work.  But as others have said, getting the source code out of an EXE is considered impossible.