From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26210 invoked by alias); 24 Jul 2002 03:45:13 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 26203 invoked from network); 24 Jul 2002 03:45:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO zwingli.cygnus.com) (208.245.165.35) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 24 Jul 2002 03:45:12 -0000 Received: by zwingli.cygnus.com (Postfix, from userid 442) id 0E3E75EA11; Tue, 23 Jul 2002 22:45:10 -0500 (EST) To: Andrew Cagney Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: WIP: Register doco References: <3D38AF69.7020902@ges.redhat.com> <3D39954D.1020306@ges.redhat.com> <3D39CAD1.3060106@ges.redhat.com> <3D3AE41B.10201@ges.redhat.com> <3D3DF608.8010403@ges.redhat.com> From: Jim Blandy Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:45:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <3D3DF608.8010403@ges.redhat.com> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2002-07/txt/msg00243.txt.bz2 Andrew Cagney writes: > So "hardware" is as problematic as "physical"? What you're telling me > is that I should avoid all such terms, right? I'm saying that they're unhelpful terms in drawing a distinction between cooked and raw registers, and that a better approach would be to provide examples of how the distinction allows GDB to cleanly describe one or two well-known architectures. In situations where the contrast being drawn is obvious, "hardware" and "physical" are fine terms. For example, if one were writing about how stubs return from exceptions they've trapped, one could talk about the necessity to restore the values of the "hardware registers" from the stub's working copy. There it's clear. But in the present discussion, neither the raw and the cooked registers are closer to the "hardware" --- they both describe entities that have some reality in the "hardware". So the term isn't helpful. It's a public placeholder for a private intuition. It lets the writer think they've made their point, while leaving the reader in the dark. > If this section needs an example then (given MarkK's observation about > the i387) then either d10v's two stack pointers or the SH's bank > registers. Neither of these are especially complicated. But... but the IA-32's FP and MMX hair is, like, the canonical motivation for the cooked/raw distinction. You've said repeatedly that a GDB developer needs to understand this distinction. That makes it a *good* example, right? I think it's one of the best --- especially since it's something familiar to a lot more people than the d10v and the SH.