isExecutable.cpp

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A library for checking if a file is executable.

Features

Does:

• parses headers of
  • ELF
  • PE
  • Mach-O
• reports
  • file class
    • ordinary
    • executable
    • shared library
    • shell script
  • whether PIC used (according to headers)
  • bitness: 32 or 64
  • access rights - whether x bit is set
• POSIX platforms:
  • checks shebang
• Win32
  • if a file name matches the one of shell scripts
• provides functions to convert machine-readable reports into strings, both human-readable and machine-readable
  • JSON
  • human-readable 1 char space-separated "brief" format
  • human-readable space-separated "verbose" format
• provides C wrappers to be used from the languages other than C++

Doesn't do:

• doesn't parse the format fully, only some few checks on headers are done
• big-endian machines are out of scope, everything is assummed to be little endian
• doesn't check machine code
• doesn't check whether content is really a shell script
• doesn't check if we can really run that file

Installation

Packaging with CPack is implemented, you can generate an installable package for Debian and RPM-based distros. All the dependencies are assummed to be installed the same way.

Usage

See the example in bin directory.

Related projects

• https://github.com/fitzgen/is_executable - a lib doing the similar thing in Rust. Doesn't parse ELF.