Open a binary with no symbols and you're looking at a screen full of dummy names. The plugin helps with that in two ways.

First, it scans the strings a function references and puts them into its comment, so you can guess what the function is about before you even open it.

Second — and this is the part I added — in some apps and games (L2 for example) almost every function in the DLL has an error handler that carries the function's own name. The plugin digs those names out of the exception handling data and renames the function accordingly. Makes the research process a hundred times easier.

What it looks like

Before:

int __thiscall sub_101EFF40(void *this, int a2, int a3)

After:

// #STR: "param2", "NSystemMessageManager::AddSystemMessageParam", "param1"
int __thiscall NSystemMessageManager::AddSystemMessageParam(...)

Install

Copy FunctionStringAssociateExtra.py into your IDA plugins directory:

• Windows — %APPDATA%\Hex-Rays\IDA Pro\plugins
• Linux / macOS — ~/.idapro/plugins

Restart IDA. You can also run it without installing via File → Script file...

Usage

Edit → Plugins → Function String Associate Extra, then choose whether to replace existing comments or append to them. Wait for auto-analysis to finish first — the plugin will tell you if it hasn't.

Example output:

==============================================================
 Function String Associate Extra ~ summary ~
--------------------------------------------------------------
  Functions total                        17478
  Skipped (< 8 bytes)                     1250
  Already named (rename skipped)          7534
  #STR comments written                   6159
  Names from catch/SEH                    1337
  Rename candidates                       2077
  Renamed                                 2077
  Failed                                     0
  Elapsed                              31.11 s
==============================================================

Configuration

Constants at the top of the file:

Setting	Default	Meaning
MIN_STRING_SIZE	4	Shortest string worth keeping
MAX_LINE_STRING_COUNT	10	Strings per function comment
MAX_COMMENT_SIZE	764	Comment length cap
MIN_FUNC_SIZE	8	Skip thunks smaller than this
ANSI_CODECS	utf-8, cp1251, cp1252, cp949	Codecs tried for single-byte strings
UNWIND_HELPERS	AppUnwindF, ...	Helper names that mark a name-carrying call
SUFFIX_MODE	"index"	Name_1 / Name_2, or "addr" for Name_401000
CONF_SEH / CONF_CALLSITE / CONF_STRING	100 / 60 / 20	Confidence per name source

Limitations

• The exception-handling walk targets 32-bit MSVC binaries. On other compilers or on x64 the commenting phase still works, but renaming will find few or no names.
• UNWIND_HELPERS is tuned for a particular family of clients. If your target uses a differently named helper, add it there.
• Renaming modifies the database. Work on a copy of your .idb the first time.

Thx to

Sirmabus and oxiKKK for the plugin base <3