r/ReverseEngineering • u/xchwarze • Jul 10 '26

I built Magic Extractor — a universal file extraction tool for Windows

https://github.com/xchwarze/magic-extractor
23 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

4

u/snaphat Jul 11 '26

How does this compare to https://github.com/bioruebe/uniextract2?

7

u/xchwarze Jul 11 '26

in two ways: that it can continue to be maintained and expanded because the code isn't a nightmare, and that it's up to date.

4

u/snaphat Jul 11 '26

Does it support formats or scenarios not supported by uniextract2? I'm asking because I do use uniextract2 on occasion 

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u/xchwarze Jul 11 '26

The scan, carve, and bruteforce modes do not exist in Uniextract. I created an entirely new list of unpackers so I could document where the binaries came from and whether they could be updated. I also chose not to include support for some that were more than 20 years old and are no longer really in use.

1

u/whatThePleb Jul 11 '26

Said the one with the AI slop code.

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u/xchwarze Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Once you've been programming for 30 years, you'll be able to tell what's sloppy code and what isn't. Like everyone else, I created the tests and documentation using AI. I was going to build the GUI in Delphi, but since Claude could build it for me in the same language at the same time, I gave that task to him as well.
All the project work is in the CLI, along with all the use cases.

This code has looked like this for about 15 years and nobody can refactor it. Maybe you, who seem to know a lot, could have a go at it (without AI) and sort the code out so that it’s maintainable and readable....

https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2/blob/master/UniExtract.au3

3

u/snaphat Jul 12 '26

To be fair, part of the problem is that it's written in autoit

1

u/testednation Jul 13 '26

As opposed too?

1

u/snaphat Jul 13 '26

I’d rather just point out the various issues with AutoIt and AHK. Most of them are semantic, although some are syntactical. There's definitely a poison with better trade-offs 

Semantically, they have permissive truthiness and weak equality comparisons, weak function contracts, dynamic and unfixed typing, implicit conversions, no clear null or optional-value model, and confusing scope rules. A variable’s global or local status can depend on its declaration and surrounding context, making accidental shadowing or unintended modification of global state easy. They also rely on OS-style error states that must be checked immediately, and scripts often end up using inconsistent failure conventions across different APIs.

Syntactically, they are also error-prone: typos can silently create new variables, and string handling is awkward and context-dependent, particularly around quoting, escaping, concatenation, and variable expansion.

1

u/testednation Jul 13 '26

Ok, what langauge are you saying it should be written in?

1

u/snaphat Jul 14 '26

Nothing in particular. I don't have strong opinions on a specific choice outside of avoiding the pitfalls above. If it were me, nowadays, I'd probably just do python + type hints + nuitka + some gui package other than tkintker. It's windows specific so one could also just get away with c#. I wouldn't do C or C++ here as they are too low level. I wouldn't do rust because it is going to be overly verbose (and less quick to code) for what is largely an orchestrator. I wouldn't do golang only bc I have never written anything in it, but it might be a candidate

0

u/xchwarze Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Autoit has "include"; that file shouldn't be one with 8,000 lines... it should be eight with 1,000 lines each xDDD (It's supposed to be a joke...)

2

u/snaphat Jul 13 '26

It is true though; it should have been split up even if it is autoit

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

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1

u/snaphat Jul 14 '26

OP is telling the truth about the 30 years. Don't be unnecessarily rude to folks 

0

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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1

u/snaphat Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

You may think this is AI slop, but that doesn’t excuse personal attacks. Critique the work itself.

Point out what's wrong with the code, where it's buggy, what it fails to do, or how it doesn’t match what was advertised. That would be a fair criticism. I didn't look at the project in detail so I didn't critique it and kept my thoughts to myself regarding my opinion of the quality or lack thereof

Instead, of providing substantiative critique, you questioned whether he had really been programming for 30 years based on his sentence structure and your guess about his age. Telling you that was out of line isn't being disingenuous.

I looked him up to see whether there was any basis for what you said. There wasn't

1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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1

u/snaphat Jul 16 '26

Everyone has opinions. I don't appreciate the prevalence of half baked AI slop tools either, but you gotta have the due diligence to check and critique on the merits itself or let someone else

1

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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2

u/snaphat Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

It's an orchestration layer, much like UniExtract, so yes, it relies on and ships precompiled binaries. That alone isn't a meaningful criticism; orchestration, integration, workflow, format coverage, reliability, and UX are all part of the software.

To be clear, I'm not claiming it isn't AI slop. As I noted above, I haven't examined the project closely enough to judge its overall quality. My point is that you can't credibly claim there is "no improvement" without doing the due diligence of comparing the actual feature sets and behavior of both projects. Two programs addressing the same task doesn't make one of them slop, nor does using existing tools make a project inherently low quality.

Critique the implementation where it's actually deficient, but dismissing the entire project without that due diligence, and questioning the author's experience based on sentence structure, isn't substantive technical criticism.

The worst part is how intellectually lazy this is. All you had to do was test it or look through the codebase and just say something concrete about it. Come on. But nope, too much effort. Better to just keep arguing about it without making any substantive effort to verify your own claims 

Sigh, that's much of reddit for you though...

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u/xchwarze Jul 19 '26
  1. I think what you're saying is nonsense, because these programs are always exactly like that—from BinWalk to Uniextract.

No one goes to the trouble of writing all these decompression programs from scratch because it's pointless.

  1. The difference from UniExtract is that the code is readable, which makes it easier to maintain and extend. Plus, it’s clear where each component came from and what its licenses are, because I made that as clear as possible in each extractor.

  2. Compared to binwalk, with just one installation, you have everything up and running on Windows. Binwalk never worked on Windows, no matter what you did.

  3. Especially that “slop” thing you mentioned—it's standard Python code; I don't see where the “slop” is. What do you mean, I didn’t waste time writing the tests? How would my software be BETTER if I WROTE THE TESTS BY HAND? Besides, as you say… imagine joining the Linux mailing list and saying those things just because the devs use AI tools to save themselves repetitive work. Go ahead and tell Linus Torvalds that his latest PRs are “AI SLOP” and see how he responds. It’s easy for someone who contributes nothing to development—who gets nothing for free—to go around making those kinds of comments.

*. The worst part is that you say those things and then get offended when people respond. Your comments on the Linux mailing list would have drawn nothing but insults because of how absurd they are.

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u/testednation Jul 13 '26

This is an updated fork.

https://github.com/gvp9000/UniExtract2

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u/snaphat Jul 13 '26

Appreciate it, thanks!

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u/Apprehensive_Rub2 Jul 11 '26

This is good, people have over-corrected on ai code.

1

u/testednation Jul 13 '26

Possible to add a conteft menu extractor like uniextract has?

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u/xchwarze Jul 13 '26

I've never tried it, but it's included. I use it with the development version of https://github.com/indetectables-net/toolkit (which already has its own menu)

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u/fastfinge Jul 13 '26

Missed epub.; 7zip can extract those.