A cool thing that you can do with gdb is to change the values of variables in programs that are already running, or calling their functions. For example you can update a variable on your parent shell, e.g., "export" the variable $X to your parent (!) :
gdb --batch-silent -ex "attach $PPID" -ex "call (int)bind_variable(\"X\",\"$X\",0)"
That sounds both useful and horrifying. Do you use this for CI scripts? That's where I've needed this kind of functionality.
Never (yet) in production. I just use it for personal silly scripts, like changing the background color of my running xterms, and things like that.
Re:The State of Linux Debuggers
by Blikkentrekker on Sunday December 13, 2020 @01:57PM
(#25409056)
Guilty as charged — I have never used GDB for anything but that, and I have never used awk for any other function than to select columns.
It's so heavily scriptable and configurable that you could argue that it's almost more of a debugger framework than just a debugger. I would argue that it's almost under-used really, simply because most devs don't realize what it can do besides setting a breakpoint and dumping a backtrace.