Jnc: +New cat

2022-06-27T12:03:30Z

+New cat

Jnc: +cat

2018-12-14T03:19:13Z

+cat

Jnc: A pretty good start

2018-10-24T21:50:57Z

A pretty good start

New page

A '''debugger''' is a [[program]] which is used together with another program (the one being 'debugged') to find faults in the other program. They can be used on machines without an [[operating system]], in which case the debugger has to share the machine with the program being debugged; on systems which support [[process]]es, generally the debugger is in one process, and the program being debugged is in another.

Simple debuggers only allow the [[programmer]] to examine the program ''after'' it has failed; look and see what was in the [[Central Processing Unit|CPU]]'s [[register]]s, [[main memory]] locations, etc. Use of a [[symbol table]] allows memory locations to be selected by their name in the program, instead of the programmer having to work out their numeric [[address]]es.

These debuggers often operate on a [[core dump]], where the operating system stores the contents of a process' [[address space]], etc on [[secondary storage]] when the process hits a [[trap]], or at the request of the [[user]].

More powerful debuggers allow the program to be debugged to be started, and as it runs, the capabilities of the debugger are used to watch the program run. Such debuggers contain a number of tools which are used to do this:

* The ability to install '''breakpoints''', which are places in the program which, when [[execute|execution]] reaches that [[instruction]], the program stops running, so the debugger can examine registers, memory, etc.

* '''Single-stepping''', where the CPU executes a single instruction of the program, and then returns control to the debugger.

* '''Stack traces''', which show the list of [[subroutine]] invocations on the [[stack]].

Originally, debuggers operated at the [[assembly language]] level, but debuggers can now operated at the higher-level [[programming language]] level.

{{semi-stub}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:03, 27 June 2022
Line 17:		Line 17:
	{{semi-stub}}		{{semi-stub}}

−	[[Category:Software Basics‎]]	+	[[Category: Software Basics‎]]
		+	[[Category: Debuggers]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:19, 14 December 2018
Line 16:		Line 16:

	{{semi-stub}}		{{semi-stub}}
		+
		+	[[Category:Software Basics‎]]

Debugger - Revision history

Jnc: +New cat

Jnc: +cat

Jnc: A pretty good start