Question

I’m doing some assembly-level debugging in GDB. Is there a way to get GDB to show me the current assembly instruction in the same way that it shows the current source line? The default output after every command looks like this:

0x0001433f      990         Foo::bar(p);

This gives me the address of the current instruction, but I have to keep referring back to the output of disassemble in order to see which instruction I’m currently executing.

Answer 1

You can switch to assembly layout in GDB:

(gdb) layout asm

See here for more information. The current assembly instruction will be shown in assembler window.

   ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │0x7ffff740d756 <__libc_start_main+214>  mov    0x39670b(%rip),%rax        #│
   │0x7ffff740d75d <__libc_start_main+221>  mov    0x8(%rsp),%rsi              │
   │0x7ffff740d762 <__libc_start_main+226>  mov    0x14(%rsp),%edi             │
   │0x7ffff740d766 <__libc_start_main+230>  mov    (%rax),%rdx                 │
   │0x7ffff740d769 <__libc_start_main+233>  callq  *0x18(%rsp)                 │
  >│0x7ffff740d76d <__libc_start_main+237>  mov    %eax,%edi                   │
   │0x7ffff740d76f <__libc_start_main+239>  callq  0x7ffff7427970 <exit>       │
   │0x7ffff740d774 <__libc_start_main+244>  xor    %edx,%edx                   │
   │0x7ffff740d776 <__libc_start_main+246>  jmpq   0x7ffff740d6b9 <__libc_start│
   │0x7ffff740d77b <__libc_start_main+251>  mov    0x39ca2e(%rip),%rax        #│
   │0x7ffff740d782 <__libc_start_main+258>  ror    $0x11,%rax                  │
   │0x7ffff740d786 <__libc_start_main+262>  xor    %fs:0x30,%rax               │
   │0x7ffff740d78f <__libc_start_main+271>  callq  *%rax                       │
   └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
multi-thre process 3718 In: __libc_start_main     Line: ??   PC: 0x7ffff740d76d
#3  0x00007ffff7466eb5 in _IO_do_write () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#4  0x00007ffff74671ff in _IO_file_overflow ()
   from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#5  0x0000000000408756 in ?? ()
#6  0x0000000000403980 in ?? ()
#7  0x00007ffff740d76d in __libc_start_main ()
   from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
(gdb)