HP gnu source-level debugger 5992-4701 manual GDB Files, Commands to specify files

12 GDB Files

GDB needs to know the file name of the program to be debugged, both in order to read its symbol table and in order to start your program. To debug a core dump of a previous run, you must also tell GDB the name of the core dump file.

12.1 Commands to specify files

You can specify executable and core dump file names as arguments to the GDB start-up command (see“Getting In and Out of GDB” (page 25)).

Occasionally it is necessary to change to a different file during a GDB session. In these situations the GDB commands to specify new files are useful.

file filename	Use filename as the program to be debugged. It
	is read for its symbols and for the contents of
	pure memory. It is also the program executed
	when you use the run command. If you do not
	specify a directory and the file is not found in
	the GDB working directory, GDB uses the
	environment variable PATH as a list of
	directories to search, just as the shell does when
	looking for a program to run. You can change
	the value of this variable, for both GDB and your
	program, using the path command.
	On systems with memory-mapped files, an
	auxiliary file named filename.syms may hold
	symbol table information for filename. If so, GDB
	maps in the symbol table from `filename.syms',
	starting up more quickly. See the descriptions of
	the file options -mappedand -readnow
	(available on the command line, and with the
	commands file, symbol-file, or
	add-symbol-file, described below) for more
	information.
file	file with no argument makes GDB discard any
	information it has on both executable file and the
	symbol table.
exec-file [ filename ]	Specify that the program to be run (but not the
	symbol table) is found in file- name. GDB
	searches the environment variable PATH if
	necessary to locate your program. Omitting

12.1 Commands to specify files 125