![MQL5 - Language of trade strategies built-in the MetaTrader 5 client terminal](https://c.mql5.com/i/registerlandings/logo-2.png)
You are missing trading opportunities:
- Free trading apps
- Over 8,000 signals for copying
- Economic news for exploring financial markets
Registration
Log in
You agree to website policy and terms of use
If you do not have an account, please register
Hi AmmoDawg,
A *.ex4 file (note the similarity to *.exe or executable program files) is the compiled version of text *.mq4 programs that MetaTrader needs it to be in to utilize with the MT4 server and client. If it is like most such complied programs, it s now in a binary format commonly erfered to as 'machine code', most likely Octal (8 bit) or HexaDecimal (16 bit) format. Though obviously there are 32 bit and 64 bit programs around (in other fields) now as well. I'm very new to the ForEx and even newer to mql4 programming, but not computers. If you take a compiled program and Drag & Drop it into a word processor, you will see that it contains mostly unintelligible characters that generally utilizes 8 bit binary code which has a whole lot more 'special characters' (256 if it is forced to be displayed as text) than the 7 bit ASCII code which has 128 different characters and covers all of the upper and lower case letters, all of the single digit integers and a number of special characters that are used as either text or in some cases as commands. Once the program is compiled into the binary code, usually 8 bit that it needs to be in to run in whcih allows for 256 different 'numbers or combinations', it is for all intents and purposes unintelligible to humans. During web searches, I have run into a commercial business that says that they can 'de-compile' *.ex4 files back into the original *.mq4 text files as well as compiling *.mq4 programs into un-crackable *.ex4 programs.
There may be others here with far more experience with ForEx programming (which is pretty well everyone, Lol (< 8) that may know ways to accomplish this. I suggest that you start a new thread in the forums so that the subject will be displayed and you may find others that are able help you out with this.