reverse engineering
The process of analysing an existing system to identify its
components and their interrelationships and create
representations of the system in another form or at a higher
level of abstraction. Reverse engineering is usually
undertaken in order to redesign the system for better
maintainability or to produce a copy of a system without
access to the design from which it was originally produced.
For example, one might take the {executable} code of a
computer program, run it to study how it behaved with
different input and then attempt to write a program oneself
which behaved identially (or better). An {integrated circuit}
might also be reverse engineered by an unscrupulous company
wishing to make unlicensed copies of a popular chip.
(1995-10-06)