Re: String handling in GDB command language variables

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com>]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:45:57AM -0500, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> 
> >The command language always mimics the current source language being
> >debugged, defaulting to C; C doesn't have a string type.  That's the
> >historical justification anyway.
> >
> >If there's a consensus that a string type would be useful, it could
> >probably be done.  I think it might be a good idea; we could use
> >strings for arguments to gdb commands, etc.  However I'm not sure of
> >the syntax.
> 
> DanielJ's comment, GDB's current behavior is to always a malloc(), store 
> the value in the target, and then create a `char *' `struct value'.
> 
> Is there anything in the `rule book' that says that GDB can be lazy 
> (when given "string" create a `char[]' `struct value' and then only 
> allocate space / create the pointer when the value is needed by the 
> target)?  Is this trivial?  Is this needed?
> 
> "no"? "no"? "yes"?

Those are my guesses, too.  I think that this change could also be
related to the kfail in our testsuite dealing with character array
types...

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer