Deobfuscator: the struggle for light!

[Sigmund]

please look at comments for description. maybe this is not the right place where to post, but it would be indelicate to post it in obfuscation section, and, 'cos it works and it's "warning proof" and "strict proof" i decided to post here.
i would be glad to receive help from guys interested in developing such a tool, and so,
thanks in advance.
Sigmund

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# This is the first attempt to write something useful to break all tho
+se
# wonderful pieces-of-art that obfuscated code represents. How do they
+ work?
# How can i read them more easily? Is this Reverse Engineering? I just
# started learning Perl and Obfuscation, and i wanted something to hel
+p when
# learning from others' scripts. ASCII-art-formatted scripts are reall
+y hard
# to read. this crumb of code helps a little, and I look for help to i
+mprove
# it. For instance, it should detect and properly format regular expre
+ssions
# which do not use regular "/" and hopefully better format loops!
# And finally, how may the "enlightenment" come from "obfuscation" ?
# Follow the light, and leave the Dark Side! ;-)
#
# (by the way, there's always something fascinating in darkness...
# i like obfu!!! ;-P )

use strict;
use vars '$output','$line';
$output = $ARGV[0].".deobfu";
open (INF, "< $ARGV[0]");
open (OUF, "> $output");
while (<INF>)
    {
    $line .= $_;
    $line =~ s/\#(^\!).*\n//g;
    } 
$line =~ s/ +/ /g;
$line =~ s/\t+/\t/g;
$line =~ s/\n//g;
$line =~ s/use /\nuse /g;
$line =~ s/(qq)([\W])(\w*)([\W])/\"$3\"/g;
$line =~ s/(q)([\W])(\w*)([\W])/\'$3\'/g;
$line =~ s/\;/\;\n/g;
$line =~ s/([\{||\}])/\n$1\n/g;

print OUF $line;
close (INF);
close (OUF);

[bikeNomad]

You might like to look at perltidy, which is smart enough not to mess with important whitespace.

[Cirollo]

A nice effort. I think this has been tried before, but I don't know the node offhand. Maybe it was a discussion on scripts to make scripts more obfuscated instead of vice versa.

But, remember that many obfu's depend on their whitespace, since you're blindly collapsing it down. For example, just try to run Camel Code after it's been sent through your script. Or, see what happens to Things are not what they seem like.. Test this on a few of BooK or Erudil's obfuscations and I bet they will break too.

The best obfuscations abuse the more exotic features of the language, which makes them that much harder to deconstruct.

Also, you might have better luck if you try to run scripts through B::Deparse, by running perl -MO=Deparse file.pl > file.pl.deobfu