Problem debugging statically linked c++ program with GDB 6.0

[Bob Rossi]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 02:07:38PM +0200, Holger Sesterhenn wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a bug in my statically linked c++ program and would like to use
> DDD with GDB to see whats wrong. I use <string> from the stdlibc++.
> DDD/GDB shows a SIGSGV if I call a member function e.g. c_str() to take
> a look at the value of the string.
> 
> I have written a little program to reproduce the problem (don't need
> DDD). If the program is linked dynamically, everything works as expected!
> 
> If somebody can confirm the problem I would submit a bug report.
> Searching the bug database I did not find any hint.
> 
> Running Linux 2.4.21 (IA86/32), compiled gcc 3.3.3, glibc 2.3.2 and gdb
> 6.0 myself (chrooted). The problem can be reproduced with a plain SuSE
> 9.0 installation (gcc 3.3.1, glibc 2.3.2, gdb 5.3.92).

I don't know if this is helpful, however, GDB crashes for me even when I
link dynamically. It will only evaluate the expression sometimes for me.

Because of this, I have added the snippet below to my .gdbinit file

   # prints a C++ string
   define pc
      set $string_length=$arg0.length()
      set print elements $string_length
      print $arg0.dat
      set print elements 0
   end

   document pc
      Prints a C++ string
   end
   
This seems to work ok, even though it's not the perfect solution.
For some reason calling the length() function never seems to crash for
me.

Bob Rossi