Re: [RFA, doc RFA] Add gdb.add_command_alias

[Doug Evans <dje@google.com>]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 10:39 AM, Pedro Alves <pedro@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 September 2011 18:20:16, Doug Evans wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> >> Date: Fri,  9 Sep 2011 11:36:36 -0700 (PDT)
>> >> From: dje@google.com (Doug Evans)
>> >>
>> >> Per discussion on IRC, here is a patch to add support for adding
>> >> command aliases.
>> >
>> > I wish people would discuss such issues here, not on IRC.  These
>> > discussions should be recorded, for one thing.
>>
>> Whatever additional discussion one wants to have we can have here.
>> No worries.
>>
>> > Me, I don't understand the need for this feature, especially not why
>> > it should be a Python-only feature.  Moreover, why do we need to have
>> > this, when one can easily write a command that just calls an existing
>> > one, to have the same effect.
>
> IMO, since this is really about aliasing new CLI spellings for
> existing CLI commands, it'd make sense to have a way to alias commands
> in the CLI, without python.  E.g.,
>
> (gdb) alias isl info shared library
> (gdb) isl
> <list shared libraries>
>
> Python could then of course just do gdb.execute("alias ...").

[s/shared library/sharedlibrary/
It's not clear how general you intended this to be.
E.g., handle an arbitrary number of prefixes?]

If the intent is to handle an arbitrary number of prefixes
then that's a different kind of
alias than how gdb uses the word today.

E.g.
(gdb) alias spe set print elements
(gdb) spe 20 # set print elements = 20

That's fine, just checking ...

IWBN to add aliases from the CLI for anything,
(e.g., grep for add_alias_cmd in mips-tdep.c, sheesh!)
but that will require a bit more syntax.
One would need to distinguish aliasing
"spe" --> "set print elements"
from
"set print foobars" --> "set print elements".