Searching for pattern in memory from GDB?

[James Nordby <jnordby@caspiannetworks.com>]

Hi,

I'm trying to put together a fast, internal-circular-buffer-type tracing
package.  I want to get able to extract the traces from either a running
program or a core file, but our binaries are normally sent out stripped.
I thought if I put a word or two with a particular pattern at the
beginning
of the trace buffer, I could look for that with gdb and use gdb to
format
the rest of the buffer.

Do you know of any way to say 'search for pattern in <BSS,heap> space'
in gdb?

If not, can you think of any other way to find a buffer in a stripped
binary?

Thanks,
Jim

P.S. - Please respond to my e-mail addr as well as the list...