until, u

Continue running until a source line past the current line, in the

 

current stack frame, is reached. This command is used to avoid

 

single stepping through a loop more than once. It is like the

 

next command, except that when until encounters a jump,

 

it automatically continues execution until the program counter

 

is greater than the address of the jump.

 

This means that when you reach the end of a loop after single

 

stepping though it, until makes your program continue

 

execution until it exits the loop. In contrast, a next command

 

at the end of a loop simply steps back to the beginning of the

 

loop, which forces you to step through the next iteration.

 

until always stops your program if it attempts to exit the

 

current stack frame.

 

until may produce somewhat counterintuitive results if the

 

order of machine code does not match the order of the source

 

lines. For example, in the following excerpt from a debugging

 

session, the f (frame) command shows that execution is stopped

 

at line 206; yet when we use until, we get to line 195:

 

((gdb)) f

 

#0 main (argc=4, argv=0xf7fffae8) at m4.c:206

 

206 expand_input();

 

((gdb)) until

 

195 for ( ; argc > 0; NEXTARG) {

 

This happened because, for execution efficiency, the compiler

 

had generated code for the loop closure test at the end, rather

 

than the start, of the loop―even though the test in a C for-loop

 

is written before the body of the loop. The until command

 

appeared to step back to the beginning of the loop when it

 

advanced to this expression; however, it has not really gone to

 

an earlier statement―not in terms of the actual machine code.

 

until with no argument works by means of single instruction

 

stepping, and hence is slower than until with an argument.

until location,

Continue running your program until either the specified

u location

location is reached, or the current stack frame returns. location

 

is any of the forms of argument acceptable to break (see

 

“Setting breakpoints” (page 52)). This form of the command

 

uses breakpoints, and hence is quicker than until without an

 

argument.

66 Stopping and Continuing

Page 66
Image 66
HP gnu source-level debugger 5992-4701 manual Setting breakpoints page 52. This form of the command