decompiling back to C++?

I think it will depend on how big and how complex the program is. If the program is very big like M$ office, I would say it's impossible.

[Shub-Nigurrath]

C++ get decompiled back to C to be exact, all the object things are converted to C structures such as the hierarchy, virtual functions and so on are effectively implemented using vtables and so on.

I read a study which described how to do object programming using simple plain c..it's not a hypothesis but a need on some platforms where there isn't available c++ compilers..

Certainly, it would be impossible to get the exact code, just as the programmers had written it. The code optimizations made by the compiler make this impossible.

You may get a C/C++ code, but it would be impossible to read. Have you tried to read a simple program written by a bad programmer? I'm a student and I had got to check some codes from other students, on their first programming course. Even if you know what the code should do, it's really hard to understand everything.

I think this would happen if you get something from ASM to C++. It would be a big mess. Maybe everything got sense thinking about classes, with functions making specific tasks. Now think the compiler will make a "few" changes. Then put it into assembler. Taking it back to C would complicate the things even more.

Why would you want to get SOME (and not THE) C code from a program? I still don't see what is the idea behind this.

[Polaris]

Hmm... I think that there is some confusion about this...

Decompilation to C++ is impossible. The decompiler can rebuild only information contained within its target: now, since its target is ASSEMBLER, which lacks anything related to HLL, it cannot surely rebuild things that are not included, like objects.

Also, consider that some C++ concept are completely discarded after the code checking phase, and are never really used within the compiler: for example the PRIVATE/PUBLIC/PROTECTED directives are used only for security checking.