[ Thanks to Frank for
this link. ]
“Most flavours of Linux come with the GNU debugger, or gdb
to the shell. Gdb lets you see the internal structure of a program,
print out variable values, set breakpoints and single step through
source code. It makes an extremely powerful tool for fixing
problems in program code. In this article I’ll try to show how cool
and useful gdb is.“
“Before you can get started, the program you want to debug has
to be compiled with debugging information in it. This is so gdb can
work out the variables, lines and functions being used. To do this,
compile your program under gcc (or g++) with an extra ‘-g’
option…”
“Gdb is run from the shell with the command ‘gdb’ with the
program name as a parameter, for example ‘gdb eg’, or you can use
the file command once inside gdb to load a program for debugging,
for example ‘file eg’. Both of these assume you execute the
commands from the same directory as the program. Once loaded, the
program can be started with the gdb command ‘run’.”