About "file" output?

[Jasmin Berube]

When I get the output "s800 shared executable dynamically linked" from the "file" command, Does that mean it's a C program compiled or what kind of programmation language is it? I know "file" taking its output from /etc/magic, is there a more detail /etc/magic file we can get somewhere to have more significant message output from "file" command? And the third question.... How can I have a look at those "s800 share executable dynamically linked" to understand what they do exactly?
Thanks!

[Chris Garman]

Hi,

Programs are written in a language then compiled to a binary executable. Unless you can detect the footprint of the compiler that made the executable (some leave a kind of digital signature) it is unlikely you can determine what language it was originally written in.

To find out what it is doing is very difficult. There are two options, disassemble it to assembly language and read it, or sometimes you can decompile and exe to a language, though I am not aware of this being reliable. Either way you will have to spend a long time reading every detail of the code which will not have any comments and will probably not have meaningful variable and procedure names.