Can anyone tell me a program to debug my "C programs" ? thanks... i am using Ubutnu!
Can anyone tell me a program to debug my "C programs" ? thanks... i am using Ubutnu!
gcc -g prog.c
gdb a.out
Then type "help" at the gdb prompt
Then type "run"
Or you can use one of several GUI front-ends to gdb, like emacs or ddd
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.
i was currently using gdb, but i don' t understand how this helps to debug programs...i mean, sometimes i have segmentation fault and all it does is print in the screen Segmentation Fault...which does not help me. however i may be wrong with my thoughts... Can you please help me a little? thanks...
If you run your program in gdb and it seg faults, gdb will "catch" the seg fault signal and halt the program on the offending line. You can then ask for a backtrace, using the...wait for it...backtrace command. This will show you the file name and line number that caused the crash, and you can even examine variable values, using "print variable_name_or_expression". There is a lot more to learn about it, but those two commands will help you find the majority of your common seg fault issues. There's also valgrind, a special memory usage analysis tool, and efence, a library you compile into your program to help catch memory errors.
Some info & tutorials:
Cprogramming.com - Debuggers
Cprogramming.com - Tutorials - An Introduction to GDB
Using Valgrind to Find Memory Leaks - Cprogramming.com
I can't find a good link for efence off hand, but I can work on that if you need it.
One caveat for using gdb, you have to compile your program to include debugging symbols (the "-g" flag that Salem mentioned) so that you can see and use function/variable names, otherwise you just get arbitrary addresses for all your identifiers.
thank you all! i will check them out and post if i got a problem...thanks again...
