It would be nice sometimes if ptype had a "layout mode" that inlined superclass definitions into the structure layout, so that all the details of a given class could be seen at once, without needing multiple invocations of ptype.
This would be particularly good for ptype/o
You can see how confusing this is for ptype/o in gdb itself: /* offset | size */ type = struct dwarf2_per_bfd { public: /* 0 | 8 */ bfd *obfd; /* 8 | 88 */ struct auto_obstack : public obstack { /* XXX 80-byte padding */ /* total size (bytes): 88 */ } obstack; Here the "padding" comment is just wrong, but the type-printer is confused because it doesn't really do anything sensible with superclasses.