How to tell if a binary is release or debug in both win and *nix

for C++ on Linux, you can do:

    objdump --source yourbin |grep printf

Replace printf with whatever function call you do. If it is debug, it will display all the actual source code call you do. If it is release, it will just display the founded symbol from the symbol table.

for C++ on Windows, you can use depends.exe and see if it depends on MSVCRT (release) or MSVCRTD (debug)