Sun Studio 12: Debugging a Program With dbx

Using Fix and Continue With Runtime Checking

You can use runtime checking along with fix and continue to isolate and fix programming errors rapidly. Fix and continue provides a powerful combination that can save you a lot of debugging time. Here is an example:.


% cat -n bug.c
     1 #include stdio.h
     2 char *s = NULL;
     3
     4 void
     5 problem()
     6 {
     7      *s = ’c’;
     8 }
     9
    10 main()
    11 {
    12      problem();
    13      return 0;
    14 }
% cat -n bug-fixed.c
     1 #include stdio.h
     2 char *s = NULL;
     3
     4 void
     5 problem()
     6 {
     7
     8      s = (char *)malloc(1);
     9      *s = ’c’;
    10 }
    11
    12 main()
    13 {
    14      problem();
    15      return 0;
    16 }
yourmachine46: cc -g bug.c
yourmachine47: dbx -C a.out
Reading symbolic information for a.out
Reading symbolic information for rtld /usr/lib/ld.so.1
Reading symbolic information for librtc.so
Reading symbolic information for libc.so.1
Reading symbolic information for libintl.so.1
Reading symbolic information for libdl.so.1
Reading symbolic information for libw.so.1
(dbx) check -access
access checking - ON
(dbx) run
Running: a.out
(process id 15052)
Enabling Error Checking... done
Write to unallocated (wua):
Attempting to write 1 byte through NULL pointer
Current function is problem
    7       *s = ’c’;
(dbx) pop
stopped in main at line 12 in file "bug.c"
   12       problem();
(dbx) #at this time we would edit the file; in this example just copy  
the correct version
(dbx) cp bug-fixed.c bug.c
(dbx) fix
fixing "bug.c" ......
pc moved to "bug.c":14
stopped in main at line 14 in file "bug.c"
   14       problem();
(dbx) cont

execution completed, exit code is 0
(dbx) quit
The following modules in \Qa.out’ have been changed (fixed):
bug.c
Remember to remake program.

For more information on using fix and continue, see Memory Leak (mel) Error.