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You can use catchpoints to cause the debugger to stop for certain
kinds of program events, such as C++ exceptions or the loading of a
shared library. Use the catch command to set a catchpoint.
catch eventthrowcatchexceptioncatch exception Program_Error),
the debugger will stop only when this specific exception is raised.
Otherwise, the debugger stops execution when any Ada exception is raised.
exception unhandledassertexecexec. This is currently only available for HP-UX
and gnu/Linux.
forkfork. This is currently only available for HP-UX
and gnu/Linux.
vforkvfork. This is currently only available for HP-UX
and gnu/Linux.
loadload libnameunloadunload libnametcatch eventUse the info break command to list the current catchpoints.
There are currently some limitations to C++ exception handling
(catch throw and catch catch) in gdb:
Sometimes catch is not the best way to debug exception handling:
if you need to know exactly where an exception is raised, it is better to
stop before the exception handler is called, since that way you
can see the stack before any unwinding takes place. If you set a
breakpoint in an exception handler instead, it may not be easy to find
out where the exception was raised.
To stop just before an exception handler is called, you need some
knowledge of the implementation. In the case of gnu C++, exceptions are
raised by calling a library function named __raise_exception
which has the following ANSI C interface:
/* addr is where the exception identifier is stored.
id is the exception identifier. */
void __raise_exception (void **addr, void *id);
To make the debugger catch all exceptions before any stack
unwinding takes place, set a breakpoint on __raise_exception
(see Breakpoints; Watchpoints; and Exceptions).
With a conditional breakpoint (see Break Conditions) that depends on the value of id, you can stop your program when a specific exception is raised. You can use multiple conditional breakpoints to stop your program when any of a number of exceptions are raised.