Decoding a protobuff without a circuit

Question

Is it possible to decode serialized protobuf files without a circuit using tools or anything that could decode binary data into a human-readable format?

Answer 1

You can often output the circuit. In fact, the IIRC protoc tool has a set of parameters ( --decode_raw , iirc) where it will do just that - making reasonable assumptions. However, this assumption - the format is ambiguous in that several different types of data can be stored in the same mechanisms - for example, the length with a prefix can be:

• sub-object (any type of user)
• packed array (various primitive types)
• utf-8 string
• source byte []
• and maybe something else I forget

Similarly, a 4-byte fixed-width block can be a fixed-width integer or a float; an integer can be signed or unsigned.