On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:19:43AM -0300, Crystal Kolipe wrote: > On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 10:26:55PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > I am sure gdb has some merits but for whatever C programs I wrote so > > far, a much more useful debugging technique was putting printf in > > right places and isolate the problem, and after that doing some mental > > work to actually understand why this seemingly correct line does > > something so wrong. > > Exactly. What you describe is likely the best method to fully understand the > code, what it's supposed to do and what it actually does, and by extension [...]
Yes, I guess. > > Besides, all debuggers introduce their own perturbation and thus > > certain classes of error will be very hard to catch with them, if > > ever. > > But you do realise that adding printf() calls to the code can also change, > for example, the memory layout that the compiler uses, so certain memory > allocation bugs might become more or less easily triggerable? No, this did not occurred to me, at least not in such explicit way. Albeit somewhere deep I realise that program execution can change, if for example two "not related" lines of code switch places etc. (because of optimisation, for example). Before you pointed it out above I considered printf to be almost non-intrusive way of debugging. Thanks! -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
