Language of registers

[Nick Roberts]

> > What advantage do variable objects offer for register names?

> To begin with -- consistenly. There is no fundamental difference between
> ordinary values and registers.

Is that true?  Is the logic not simpler for registers?  No need to use
GDB's notion of values, check whether they've been fetched etc.

>                                 The frontend knows how to display the
> hierarchy of variable objects, and there's no need to force the frontend to
> have additional logic for register. Note that Eclipse, for example, does
> create variable objects for all registers at the moment.

What hierarchy are you talking about?  Would a variable object for a register
have children?

> The second advantage is that -data-list-register-values has no hierarchy at
> all. If you try 

>   -data-list-register-values xmm1

> then gdb print print half-screen of output that should be specially parsed
> and displayed. 

I think that's because your syntax is wrong:

-data-list-register-names 33
^done,register-names=["xmm1"]
(gdb)
-data-list-register-values x 33
^done,register-values=[{number="33",value="{v4_float = {0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0}, v2_double = {0x0, 0x0}, v16_int8 = {0x0 <repeats 16 times>}, v8_int16 = {0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0}, v4_int32 = {0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0}, v2_int64 = {0x0, 0x0}, uint128 = 0x00000000000000000000000000000000}"}]


>                When using variable objects, the frontend already has the
> parsing/display code.

What would your variable object print for xmm1?

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob