Lecture 07

Debugging Programs with GDB

In this lecture
• What is debugging
• Most Common Type of errors
• Process of debugging
• Examples
• Further readings
• Exercises

What is Debugging
Debugging is the process of finding compile time and run
time errors in the code. Compile time errors occur due to
misuse of C language constructs. Most of the compile time
errors can be overcome with careful attention to language
syntax and use. Finding syntax errors is the first step in
a debugging process. A typical C project that contains
main.c, lib.h and lib.c can be compiled at once with

% gcc –ansi –Wall –pedantic lib.c main.c –o exec

It is also good to compile all source code files

separately, so programmer can deal with errors more
locally. For example, the main.c and lib.c in the above
example can be compiled separately with –c flag.

% gcc –c –ansi –Wall –pedantic main.c

% gcc –c –ansi –Wall –pedantic lib.c

In this case, no executable is created and two files named

main.o and lib.o will be created if source code is
successfully compiled. Later on, one can create the
executable by

% gcc lib.o main.o –o exec

Often dealing with syntax errors is the easiest part of

debugging. Once you remove common errors like, missing
semicolons, variable type mismatches, incorrect passing of

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

arguments, undefined or out of scope variables etc we can
begin to execute the code.

Run time errors are the hardest to deal with. Run time
errors can cause program to crash, or give you the
incorrect output. First step in dealing with run time
errors is to remove reasons for program to crash. Some of
the most common errors of program crash are, dereferencing
memory that has not been allocated, freeing memory that was
already freed once, opening a file that does not exists,
reading incorrect or non-existent data or processing
command line arguments that have not been provided.

Although debugging a program is an art, it is important to

develop a systematic process to debug. Often the best way
to deal with errors is to not to introduce them in the
first place. Developing individual functions and testing
them to make sure they perform as expected is quite
important. For each function, you provide the input and
test for the expected output. You also need to deal with
edge cases as they are most often the cause of the problem.
Also it is important to test the input files to make sure
that they are valid. One cannot assume that all input files
are valid. For example, an input file may have a null line
at the end of the file causing the program to behave in an
unexpected manner. In the next section we will discuss some
of the most common type of syntax and run time errors.

Most Common Type of Errors

There are no hard and fast rules about debugging code. But
some errors occur more frequently than the others. We will
start with a list of syntax errors that occur more
frequently. Here is some of the most common type of errors.

• Missing/misplaced semicolons
The most common type of error in the early stages of
development. Each statement in a program must be
separated by a semi colon. But avoid putting a semi-
colon at the end of a loop declaration. This error can
be corrected easily as compiler will provide enough
clues as to the line where semi colons are missing or
misplaced

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

 • variable type mismatches
C is a strongly typed language. We need to avoid mixing
types. For example, a double cannot be assigned to an int
or pointer should not be assigned to int etc. It is a
good practice to type cast variables when necessary. For
example, malloc always returns a void* but it can be
typecasted to a int* or double* etc.

• incorrect passing of arguments

pay special attention to function signature and how it is
called. Often incorrect arguments are passed into the
function. The danger in some cases is that compiler may
not flag the errors as a compile error hence causing
programs to fail at run time.

• undefined or out of scope variables

C variables can be referenced within the scope in which
they are declared. Typically compiler will give a
detailed error message that can easily be recognized.

Run time errors are much more serious. There are many
errors to look out for. Among some of them are
• Array index out of bounds
This error is occurred when an out of bounds array
index is referenced. In most cases a user can
unintentionally assign A[n] = something to an array
of size n. But problem comes when A[n] is
dereferenced.

• dereferencing illegal memory locations

Dereferencing memory locations that are set to NULL
or simply invalid will cause programs to crash. It
is always a good idea to test if a location is not
NULL before dereferencing. It is also important to
set pointers to NULL, when no memory is allocated
for them. It is a good practice to assign a pointer
to NULL after calling free.

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

• Illegal use of pointers (*, **, ***)
In C code, we write a lot of code using *, ** and
*** notations. While all of them are simply
pointers, where they point to vary depending of the
type. For example, int* is a pointer to an int, and
int** is a pointer to an int*, or int*** is a
pointer to an int** . Special attention must be paid
when dealing with pointers.

• missing command line arguments

Another common error is missing command line
arguments. It is important that your program check
for the number of command line arguments available
using argc. If the number is less than the expected
number, then provide a usage error message.

• accessing null pointers (addresses)

NULL pointers are addresses that do not point to any
location. For example, we may attempt to open a file
using fopen, but if the file does not exists, then a
NULL pointer is returned. Then when performing
fscanf would cause a problem. Also it is important
to check for NULL after calling malloc. Malloc may
fail to provide the block of memory your requested,
if it is not available for whatever the reason.

• Invalid passing of arguments to functions

When passing arguments to functions, a great care
must be taken to avoid invalid passes. For example,
it is possible that one can pass an int to a pointer
(no compile error) but trying to dereference the int
would cause problems.

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

Process of Debugging
While most errors can be detected using manual debugging
(eg: inserting printf statements), some errors are hard to
detect just by observing the values of variables. The
compiler may rearrange the order of the execution making
the programmer think that an error occurred in a different
place than the actual location. The best way to debug C
code is to use some of the tools available from GNU. The
most widely used tool for debugging C programs is the GDB.

GDB stands for GNU Debugger, is a powerful text debugger

that will let you do many things. For example, you can stop
program at specified location and see what has happened
when program stopped. We can look at the values of the
variables and Change things in your program, so you can
experiment with correcting the effects of one bug and go
on to learn about another.

Typically when a program is compiled and run:

> gcc example1.c –o example1

> ./example1
Segmentation fault

> Why?!
Why?!: Command not found

When it is not clear why a program crashed, we can

Compile the program using gcc with the -g flag

> gcc myprogram.c -ggdb -o myprogram

Note that –ggdb flag allows source code to be compiled for

the debugger. To start GDB

> gdb ./myprogram

There are number of gdb commands that are useful for a

debugging session.

r(un) [arglist]
Runs your program in GDB with optional argument list

b(reak) [file:]function/line
Puts a breakpoint in that will stop your program when
it is reached

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

c(ontinue)
Resumes execution of your program after it is stopped

n(ext)
When stopped, runs the next line of code, stepping
over functions

s(tep)
When stopped, runs the next line of code, stepping
into functions

q(uit)
Exits GDB

print expr
Prints out the given expression

display var
Displays the given variable at every step of execution

l(ist)
Lists source code

help [command]
Gives you help with a specified command

bt
Gives a backtrace (Lists the call stack with variables
passed in)

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

Examples
Example 1
Consider the following program

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

int x;
printf("Please enter an integer : ");
scanf("%d",x);
printf("the integer entered was %d \n", x);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

The purpose of the program is to read an integer and print

it out. But the program seg faults. Use gdb to find the
error.

Example 2
Consider the following program

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

FILE* fp = fopen(“argv[1]”, “r”);
char* word;
while (fscanf(fp,”%s”,word)>0)
{ }
return 0;
}

The purpose of the program is to read a set of strings from

a file. But the program seg faults. Use gdb to find the
error.

Example 3
Consider the following program

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

printf("%ld \n", INT_MAX);
int n = INT_MAX;
int A[n];
int i = 0;
while (i<n)
A[i] = rand()%10;

return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

The purpose of the program is to allocate an array of ints
and initialize them to a random number. But the program seg
faults. Use gdb to find the error.

Further Readings
[1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~thoffman/S09-15123/Chapter-3/Chapter-
3.html#CHAP_3.4

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

Exercises

1. Consider the following program,

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

char* name = malloc(strlen(argv[1])) ;
name = strcpy(name,argv[1]);
printf("%s \n", name);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

This code may throw a segmentation fault. Use debugger to

find out where the errors are and fix them.

2. Consider the following program. Use the GDB to find the

errors

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

int* ptr = malloc(4);
free(ptr);
scanf("%d",*ptr);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

3. Consider the following code. Explain the error w/o using

GDB

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

int** A;
foo(&A);
return 0;
}

foo(int*** array){
int** arrayint = (int**)malloc(2*n*sizeof(int*));
for (i=0;i<n;i++)
arrayint[i] = (*array)[i];
free(*array);
array = &arrayint;
}

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena

4. What is wrong with the following code

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){

int i=0,n=1000;
char name[32];
char* A[n];
FILE* infile = fopen(argv[1],”r”);
while (fscanf(infile,"%s", name) > 0)
strcpy(A[i++],name);

/*shift all elements to right by 1*/

for (j=i; j>0; j--)
A[i+1] = A[i] ;

Copyright @ 2009 Ananda Gunawardena