I was playing with the last Sothink SWF Decompiler (SSD) on my own swfs, just to see how it looks like and to check if it can re-fla it. It was long since I played with such and then it was before the re-fla generetion of decompilers. The decompiler did a fine job revealing all the assets and code inside the swf, just like it used to do in the older versions. The code revealed is AS1 but that’s, as you probably know, is how the code is compiled-to from AS2, so it isn’t the decompiler fault. Now, I went to check how well it can export the swf into an fla. SSD automaticaly suggested to save the exported FLA with the same filename as the SWF, only prefixed with ~ and in the same directory. I’ve nonchalantly clicked OK, anyhow this FLA is insignificant, all the code is in the classes… as it suddenly came to me, what about my classes. I immediately went to check on my classes, only to find out my fear was justified. SSD has overwritten my AS2 classes with his exported AS1. All were laying there deformed into inferior form, all in the same classpaths, and all without ASKING for confirmation you impudent brat (I meant to SSD, not you ;)). Ok, you gotta to relax, I told to myself, it isn’t much of a problem right now with the pushy deadline, as long as the classes will continue to function properly, I’ll worry about esthetics later, I just need it to work properly right now. But it didn’t, work.. that is, actually it did work about 90% percent ok, but there were definitely some issues. And to start looking for these issues with the disorder it made out of my code when even the few comments I have in there are gone and all of my local variables are now named _loc1, loc2, etc’. Luckily for me, relatively luckily, the swf I recompiled was just a small test file that has incorporated only a few classes, so I managed to restore most of it from backups and reorganize/rewrite the rest. Anyhow it was a painfull ordeal.
Next time I’ll be much more carefull with these kind of tools and I’ll keep it away from my original files.