You can use this manual at your leisure to read all about GDB. However, a handful of commands are enough to get started using the debugger. This chapter illustrates those commands.
One of the preliminary versions of GNU
m4 (a generic macro
processor) exhibits the following bug: sometimes, when we change its
quote strings from the default, the commands used to capture one macro
definition within another stop working. In the following short
session, we define a macro
foo which expands to
then use the
defn to define
bar as the
same thing. However, when we change the open quote string to
<QUOTE> and the close quote string to
<UNQUOTE>, the same
procedure fails to define a new synonym
$ cd gnu/m4 $ ./m4 define(foo,0000) foo 0000 define(bar,defn(‘foo’)) bar 0000 changequote(<QUOTE>,<UNQUOTE>) define(baz,defn(<QUOTE>foo<UNQUOTE>)) baz Ctrl-d m4: End of input: 0: fatal error: EOF in string
$ gdb m4 GDB is free software and you are welcome to distribute copies of it under certain conditions; type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB; type "show warranty" for details. GDB 220.127.116.1171022-git, Copyright 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc... (gdb)
GDB reads only enough symbol data to know where to find the rest when needed; as a result, the first prompt comes up very quickly. We now tell GDB to use a narrower display width than usual, so that examples fit in this manual.
(gdb) set width 70
We need to see how the
Having looked at the source, we know the relevant subroutine is
m4_changequote, so we set a breakpoint there with the GDB
(gdb) break m4_changequote Breakpoint 1 at 0x62f4: file builtin.c, line 879.
run command, we start
m4 running under GDB
control; as long as control does not reach the
subroutine, the program runs as usual:
(gdb) run Starting program: /work/Editorial/gdb/gnu/m4/m4 define(foo,0000) foo 0000
To trigger the breakpoint, we call
suspends execution of
m4, displaying information about the
context where it stops.
changequote(<QUOTE>,<UNQUOTE>) Breakpoint 1, m4_changequote (argc=3, argv=0x33c70) at builtin.c:879 879 if (bad_argc(TOKEN_DATA_TEXT(argv),argc,1,3))
Now we use the command
next) to advance execution to
the next line of the current function.
(gdb) n 882 set_quotes((argc >= 2) ? TOKEN_DATA_TEXT(argv)\ : nil,
set_quotes looks like a promising subroutine. We can go into it
by using the command
step) instead of
step goes to the next line to be executed in any
subroutine, so it steps into
(gdb) s set_quotes (lq=0x34c78 "<QUOTE>", rq=0x34c88 "<UNQUOTE>") at input.c:530 530 if (lquote != def_lquote)
The display that shows the subroutine where
m4 is now
suspended (and its arguments) is called a stack frame display. It
shows a summary of the stack. We can use the
command (which can also be spelled
bt), to see where we are
in the stack as a whole: the
backtrace command displays a
stack frame for each active subroutine.
times, we can use ‘s’; the next two times we use
n to avoid
falling into the
(gdb) s 0x3b5c 532 if (rquote != def_rquote) (gdb) s 0x3b80 535 lquote = (lq == nil || *lq == '\0') ? \ def_lquote : xstrdup(lq); (gdb) n 536 rquote = (rq == nil || *rq == '\0') ? def_rquote\ : xstrdup(rq); (gdb) n 538 len_lquote = strlen(rquote);
The last line displayed looks a little odd; we can examine the variables
rquote to see if they are in fact the new left
and right quotes we specified. We use the command
(gdb) p lquote $1 = 0x35d40 "<QUOTE>" (gdb) p rquote $2 = 0x35d50 "<UNQUOTE>"
rquote are indeed the new left and right quotes.
To look at some context, we can display ten lines of source
surrounding the current line with the
(gdb) l 533 xfree(rquote); 534 535 lquote = (lq == nil || *lq == '\0') ? def_lquote\ : xstrdup (lq); 536 rquote = (rq == nil || *rq == '\0') ? def_rquote\ : xstrdup (rq); 537 538 len_lquote = strlen(rquote); 539 len_rquote = strlen(lquote); 540 } 541 542 void
Let us step past the two lines that set
len_rquote, and then examine the values of those variables.
(gdb) n 539 len_rquote = strlen(lquote); (gdb) n 540 } (gdb) p len_lquote $3 = 9 (gdb) p len_rquote $4 = 7
That certainly looks wrong, assuming
len_rquote are meant to be the lengths of
rquote respectively. We can set them to better values using
p command, since it can print the value of
any expression—and that expression can include subroutine calls and
(gdb) p len_lquote=strlen(lquote) $5 = 7 (gdb) p len_rquote=strlen(rquote) $6 = 9
Is that enough to fix the problem of using the new quotes with the
defn? We can allow
m4 to continue
executing with the
continue) command, and then try the
example that caused trouble initially:
(gdb) c Continuing. define(baz,defn(<QUOTE>foo<UNQUOTE>)) baz 0000
Success! The new quotes now work just as well as the default ones. The
problem seems to have been just the two typos defining the wrong
lengths. We allow
m4 exit by giving it an EOF as input:
Ctrl-d Program exited normally.
The message ‘Program exited normally.’ is from GDB; it
m4 has finished executing. We can end our GDB
session with the GDB