23n@sage.cc.purdue.edu (03/11/91)
Subject: adb Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer Distribution: usa Keywords: how to I am have been wondering about using adb. I use dbx, mostly for debugging small mathematical models written in C, but I've heard about adb and I wonder what its good for. I Read TFM and played around a little and the thing seems to be a bitch to use. I do occasionally have to throw around a few pointers & dbx is okay for that, too, but what's the deal with adb? Are there any tutorials around about its use? If it's not worth learning now, what would I want to pick it up for? 23n@sage.cc.purdue.edu I am NOT a NUMBER!! - the prisoner
gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (03/12/91)
In article <7606@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> 23n@sage.cc.purdue.edu writes: > ... heard about adb and I wonder what its good for. I use it in preference to the so-called "source level" debuggers in most cases, because it works at a level closer to the actual machine, which is sometimes necessary and almost always asking more than the source-level debuggers can provide. (However, "pi" is very nice, if you have it. I use "dmdpi" for debugging Blit- family downloaded processes.) Unless you are expert at machine- language interpretation and have a good idea of the code generated by your compiler, you're probably better off in most cases working with a source-level debugger. >Are there any tutorials around about its use? Yes, for example in Volume 2 of the 7th Edition UNIX Programmer's Reference Manual. It does address a specific architecture (PDP-11), so some of the details will be different for other architectures. >If it's not worth learning now, what would I want to pick it up for? We don't know what your values are, so we can't tell you what you should decide.