GDB question: Pretty-Printing a 2D Array?

Question

I have a 2d array matrix[10][10] that I\'d like to inspect at debug time.

I understand that I can do this in GDB using

p *matrix@10

Answer 1

You could always define a function in GDB to do the same thing. If you had the following c code:

#include 
#define ARRAY_SIZE 5

void printArray(int array[ARRAY_SIZE][ARRAY_SIZE]) {
  int y;

  for (y = 0; y < ARRAY_SIZE; y++) {
    printf("[%d,%d,%d,%d,%d]\n",
        array[y][0],
        array[y][1],
        array[y][2],
        array[y][3],
        array[y][4]);
  }
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  int matrix[ARRAY_SIZE][ARRAY_SIZE] = {
    {1,2,3,4,5},
    {5,1,2,3,4},
    {4,5,1,2,3},
    {3,4,5,1,2},
    {2,3,4,5,1},
  };

  printArray(matrix);

  return 0;
}

You could then define the following GDB function (or something similar to it):

(gdb) define printMatrix
Type commands for definition of "printmatrix".
End with a line saying just "end".
>set $arr = $arg0
>set $y = 0
>while $y < 5
 >printf "[%d,%d,%d,%d,%d]\n",$arr[$y][0],$arr[$y][1],$arr[$y][2],$arr[$y][3],$arr[$y][4]
 >set $y = $y + 1
 >end
>end

which would result in the following output:

(gdb) printMatrix matrix
[1,2,3,4,5]
[5,1,2,3,4]
[4,5,1,2,3]
[3,4,5,1,2]
[2,3,4,5,1]
(gdb) 

You could just as easily use nested while loops in your GDB function. And, as noted in a previous answer you can always just call the printArray function in your program from within GDB.