Skip to Content
Decompiling Android
book

Decompiling Android

by Godfrey Nolan
July 2012
Intermediate to advanced
305 pages
6h 6m
English
Apress
Content preview from Decompiling Android

Chapter    3

Inside the DEX File

It might seem odd that we would need another virtual machine for Android phones and that the Java virtual machine (JVM) wouldn’t be good enough. But for optimization and performance, the Dalvik virtual machine (DVM) is used on all Android phones. It was named after a place in the Icelandic homeland of one the original developers and is considerably different in design from the JVM. Instead of a push-pop stack machine, the DVM uses registers. The corresponding DVM bytecode or DEX files are also a completely different design than Java class files.

But all is not lost. There is more than enough information about the DEX file specification to repeat the same exercise you looked at for the class file in Chapter 2 ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Pro Android C++ with the NDK

Pro Android C++ with the NDK

Onur Cinar
Android Fragments

Android Fragments

Dave MacLean, Satya Komatineni
Learning Embedded Android N Programming

Learning Embedded Android N Programming

Ivan Morgillo, Stefano Viola

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781430242482Purchase book