Question

I compiled an assembly program with the following variables:

.data
x: .long 1337
str: .string "Hallo Welt\n"

In gdb I wanted to use the examine command with the str address.

(gdb) x str
0x6c6c6148: Cannot access memory at address 0x6c6c6148

I don’t understand why it doesn’t work.

Answer 1

0x6c6c6148 is ‘Hall’ so gdb is trying to interpret the string contents as an address. From the manual:

addr, starting display address
addr is the address where you want GDB
to begin displaying memory. The expression need not have a pointer
value (though it may); it is always interpreted as an integer address
of a byte of memory.

Try x/s &str, it might work better.