Re: The 'x' command: size problem

[Vladimir Prus <ghost@cs.msu.su>]

Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 10:16:56PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> > Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 11:24:48 -0400
>> > From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
>> > Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com
>> > 
>> > On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 07:00:28PM +0400, Vladimir Prus wrote:
>> > > works. In fact, the x_command function in printcmd.c expects the the
>> > > size argument be always given as literal.
>> > > 
>> > > This limitation makes it somewhat harder to implement "show this
>> > > variable/expression in binary" command in a GUI. Are there any easy
>> > > workarounds?
>> > 
>> > Not as far as I know.
>> 
>> Is that a bug, and if so, should we fix it ASAP?
> 
> Personally, I don't think it's a bug.
> 
> It can't unambiguously accept x/sizeof(i), because of x/s.  I suppose
> we could allow convenience variables here, but I don't think the
> benefit is substantial.  For a frontend, it shouldn't be hard to find
> the right size as a literal.  For a user, ditto.

By the same argumentation, it should not be too hard to find the address, so
'x' should accept literal address only, that is:

   x/4 &g

should be disallowed and user will be required to write:

   print &g
   x/4 0xWHATEVER

It's a bit inconsistent that arbitrary expression is allowed to address, but
not for size.

- Volodya