Re: GDB Focus Group at the 2008 GCC Summit

[Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauerman at br dot ibm dot com>]

On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 08:34 -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 12:26:30AM -0300, Thiago Jung Bauermann wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 09:15 -0600, Tom Tromey wrote:
> > > Our consensus was to use the function-like syntax (second example
> > > above) and to parse the arguments as expressions.  This does mean
> > > there is a namespace issue, but we reasoned that we could make all the
> > > standard functions have a "gdb_" prefix or something like that.
> > 
> > What about using a different symbol, such as '%' instead of the '$' used
> > for convenience variables?
> 
> I'd like them to be convenience variables (which is what Tom has
> implemented).  Putting them in the same namespace is a
> well-established tradition and is how Python behaves - plus it lets
> them behave transparently like inferior function pointers, which can
> also be assigned to convenience variables.

Ok.

> Here's a suggestion: $builtin, like the bash 'builtin' builtin (can't
> believe I just wrote that sentence).  That would let us recover any
> lost functions.  Well, they aren't really built-in, so maybe some
> other name.  The idea of having two names for each, one more
> convenient and the other more robust.  WDYT?

Sounds good to me. If we provide a robust way to get to the Python
function, then IMHO it's not necessary to use a gdb_ prefix and we can
use bare function names. This would make the use of those functions more
natural.
-- 
[]'s
Thiago Jung Bauermann
Software Engineer
IBM Linux Technology Center