You need a program called a disassembler. It won't do you much good because all the symbolic information that is so important to humans has been lost in the creation of a hex file. Machines don't need that stuff to do their job.
My advice to you is, don't waste your time trying to work with the output of a disassembler. Write your own code to duplicate and improve the functionality of the device. You'll learn more and end up with a greater sense of satisfaction.
You need a program called a disassembler. It won't do you much good because all the symbolic information that is so important to humans has been lost in the creation of a hex file. Machines don't need that stuff to do their job.
My advice to you is, don't waste your time trying to work with the output of a disassembler. Write your own code to duplicate and improve the functionality of the device. You'll learn more and end up with a greater sense of satisfaction.
A further complication is caused by what actually generated the code in the first place, if it was a C compiler they produce really horrible, difficult to understand, code - so it's a LOT of work to try and understand the assembler code once you've disassembled it.
As I understand it, MPLAB does a fairly crude disassembly?, my programmer software WinPicProg does a much better one - but NOT for the 18F series unfortunately.
Nigel's point is an excellent one. People who that think learning assembly language is a difficult and arduous task will be completely blown away trying to understand what compilers do when the generate code. This is especially true for compilers which engage in heavy duty optimization.
A programmer really needs get into things like this one step at a time. When it is all said and done you will be much father ahead writing your own programs in any language that you choose.