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Question came up in a reverse engineering class. The prof asked this question. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, while loops == for loops, I don't have a problem with that.

IDA Pro book... Google... not seeing anything online here.

So why does IDA pro never produce for loops in its pseudocode generator?

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  • Why the downvote? How is this question off-topic? Wrong tags? – avgvstvs Apr 1 '14 at 12:04
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    The question as stated is presented as an "obvious" fact without any evidence. – Igor Skochinsky♦ Apr 1 '14 at 13:37
  • I wanted to say usually it produces do while loops. – LUser Feb 18 at 10:49
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Just because you haven't seem them does not mean they don't exist. In my experience the decompiler produces for loops all the time.

EDIT: Here's just one example:

 loc_804B520:
                 xor     edx, edx
                 jmp     short loc_804B52B

 loc_804B524:
                 mov     al, [edi+edx]
                 mov     [ebx+edx], al
                 inc     edx

 loc_804B52B:
                 cmp     edx, esi
                 jl      short loc_804B524

Output:

  for ( i = 0; i < a2; ++i )
    *(_BYTE *)(v2 + i) = *(_BYTE *)(a1 + i);
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  • Well, for the record the question came up in a reversing class, and no one had the answer. The prof asked the question. – avgvstvs Apr 1 '14 at 12:08
  • Well, the current question definitely does not mention it came from "the prof". Maybe you should rephrase your question and describe the full context. – Igor Skochinsky♦ Apr 1 '14 at 13:05
  • I updated the context accordingly. – avgvstvs Apr 1 '14 at 13:11
  • Would it be possible for you to provide an assembly blob that should be interpreted correctly as a for loop? – avgvstvs Apr 1 '14 at 13:17
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The decompiler can produce for loops.

It uses the Ctree statement element cit_for and the Ctree expression cfor_t to represent these code constructs in the decompilation graph.

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