Examining Data

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Examining data

See the following documentation for more specific discussion on examining your data using GDB.

- Expressions
- Program variables
- Artificial arrays
- Output formats
- Examining memory
- Automatic display
- Print settings
- Value history
- Convenience variables
- Registers
- Floating point hardware

The usual way to examine data in your program is with the print command (abbreviated p), or its synonym, inspect. It evaluates and prints the value of an expression of the language your program is written in (see Using GDB with different languages).

print exp
print /f exp

exp is an expression (in the source language). By default the value of exp is printed in a format appropriate to its data type; you can choose a different format by specifying ‘/f’, where f is a letter specifying the format; see Output formats.

print
print /f

If you omit exp, GDB displays the last value again (from the value history; see Value history). This allows you to conveniently inspect the same value in an alternative format.
A more low-level way of examining data is with the x command. It examines data in memory at a specified address and prints it in a specified format. See Examining memory.
If you are interested in information about types, or about how the fields of a struct or class are declared, use the ptype exp command rather than print. See Examining the symbol table.

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