Re: Non-interactive stepping

[Bob Rossi <bob at brasko dot net>]

On Sat, May 01, 2004 at 03:34:19PM -0600, Christopher Nebergall wrote:
> Is it possible to use GDB (or another app) to print out the executing source
> code file name, line number, function name etc, for an application (compiled
> with -g) in a non-interactive manner (print the output to stdout)?  I used a
> similar type of debugging in basica years ago and miss having something
> similar in modern debuggers.
> 
> I want to do something similar to
> 
> gdb -[Some command line argument] a.out
> a.out: main.c:5 main() May  1 16:18:07 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:6 main() May  1 16:18:08 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:7 main() May  1 16:18:09 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:25 print() May  1 16:18:09 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:28 print() May  1 16:18:09 CDT 2004
> a.out: source2.c:10 echo() May  1 16:18:10 CDT 2004
> a.out: source2.c:11 echo() May  1 16:18:10 CDT 2004
> a.out: source2.c:11 echo() May  1 16:18:12 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:29 print() May  1 16:18:13 CDT 2004
> a.out: main.c:8 main() May  1 16:18:14 CDT 2004
> etc...
> 
> The main reason I want this is to record program flow during real execution
> of the program without having to step through it line by line in the
> debugger. If there is a segfault, it's pretty easy to determine the program
> flow which caused it.  It would also be useful to discover how a large
> program works, and what operations in a program's GUI or command line touch
> which lines of source code. It could also be used for very crude profiling.

I don't think you should be using a debugger to do this.

Have you considered a code coverage tool? 
I think gcov might do what you want.

Bob Rossi