GDB - The GNU debugger

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The Gnu Debugger

Gdb is a symbolic debugger provided by the Free Software Foundation.
Like g++ it is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License. There are no license fees. It is free software, which also means the source code is freely available.
gdb can be used for c++ and c. I have not tried it for Java or Fortran, but it should work. gdb is a command line tool. For Unix people this is not a problem, although a GUI is more practical and more efficient. ddd is the solution.
The beauty of GNU software is the clear design and so gdb is a command line tool, whereas ddd is just a GUI, which talks to gdb via a pipe. The user has the freedom to choose between a lean and fast starting command line version, which can be useful in certain situations, and a graphical GUI based ddd, which is convenient to use, especially nested classes and/or stuctures are easy to browse, which is hard in the command line version.

Documentation

FSF provide a good manual.

Recommendations: GNU gdb

"Debugging with GDB: The GNU Source-Level Debugger". Richard Stallman and his co-authors have put everything togehter. How dow you start a debugging session, how do set breakpoints, how do you inspect stack, etc. A good book written by the people, who have created gdb.
"The Art of Debugging with GDB and DDD" dicusses the use of ddd in addition to gdb as well.

Franz Brandel

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