From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Andrew Cagney <ac131313@cygnus.com>
To: tromey@redhat.com, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>
Cc: gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] specify arguments to debugee from commandline   (second try)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 10:38:00 -0000
Message-id: <3ADC6A5E.14113BD8@cygnus.com>
References: <87vgoi58lr.fsf@creche.redhat.com> <20010330005457.A21793@llamedos.org> <20010330163603.A27435@llamedos.org> <20010403013600.B7630@llamedos.org> <87n19uirbk.fsf@creche.redhat.com> <200104060832.EAA17613@indy.delorie.com> <4.2.0.58.20010406182645.00c76e80@ics.u-strasbg.fr> <87y9td6gu4.fsf@creche.redhat.com>
X-SW-Source: 2001-04/msg00169.html

Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "Pierre" == Pierre Muller <muller@cerbere.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
> 
> >> > Maybe you mean that redirections won't work as expected.
> 
> >> Redirection is one thing I thought about.  But anything else that has
> >> side effects, such as setting variables or computing expressions,
> >> could potentially work differently as well.
> 
> Pierre>    File expansion would also occur, no ?
> 
> Pierre>    By the way, does this occur to args given by set args ?
> Pierre>    Probably not, but I am not sure here.
> 
> Yes, file expansion happens when you use `run' in gdb as well.
> That's because gdb uses the shell to launch the inferior.
> 
> At least, with native Unix debugging.  I don't know how arguments are
> handled by embedded targets.
> 
> I personally want --run for my native debugging.  So I'm not too
> concerned about how embedded targets handle strange cases here.

I'd suggest ignoring embedded targets for the moment.  Most of them
don't even allow command line arguments.  If:

	gdb --XXX ...

is made to work for the native case then someone else can fix the
embedded case.

Anyway, I think people have generally agreed that being to type:

	$ foo bar boof woftam
	$ gdb --??? !$

is preferable to:

	$ gdb --args=`something goes here`

It is a case of user convenience winning over correctness.

The next question is to do with the exact arg name.  I've several
comments:

	o	xterm uses -e program arguments

	o	I think of --run ... as more for
		the complete load'n'go case.
		GDB sets the arguments and fires
		up the program.  Only when the
		program crashes does GDB start.

Any way, if the --??? option is added then, we're one step short of the
--run that everyone really wants.	

	Andrew