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Re: GDB's command qualifier character is `/'
All of the currently accepted / options that I can find are output
format qualifiers.
While:
/d /f /c
are certainly format qualfiers, I don't think repeat counts:
/2 /16 ...
or size:
/b /h /w /g
can be interpreted that way. For instance
(gdb) x/8 $pc
...
(gdb) print/8 main
Item count other than 1 is meaningless in "print" command.
(gdb) print/g main
Size letters are meaningless in "print" command.
Note that the current code doesn't separate single letter qualfiers with
a `/' ("x/8/f/g" isn't valid). But tweaking the code to do this is
easy, and I don't expect users to notice.
Also note that GDB's lack of a strong parser means that:
x /8 $pc
is interpreted as:
x/8 $pc
I find nothing strange or inconsistent about using
a different syntax for options and for output qualifiers. GDB doesn't
have any examples of
break /shlib libc.so.6 round
or
break /shlib:libc.so.6 round
``Note that this doesn't address "parameterized qualifiers" (tar/dump
convention?) and "qualified parameters" (not allowed?)''.
To expand on "tar/dump convention", tar/dump put the parameters after
the qualifiers vis:
break/shlib libc.so.6 round
(it could get confusing if multiple qualfiers required parameters as
occures with "tar xbf 1024 -"). So:
break/shlib=libc.so.6 round
might be better ("=" avoids the shift key needed by ":").
(1) Personally, I'm always using the `/' qualifier, but I can't remember
when, if ever, I used one of the UNIX style command options.
That's because there are very few commands in all of GDB's CLI which
_take_ options. /, -, or otherwise.
The question to ask isn't how many commands use each syntax, but rather
how many users use each syntax. As a user, I use `/..' every day. As
a user, I don't think I've ever used `-...' syntax and only know of it
because I've looked at the code.
Andrew