you need to stop using print debugging (do THIS instead)

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  • Опубликовано: 30 сен 2022
  • Adding print statements to debug your crashing program is a tale as old as time. It gets the job done... most of the time. As your code gets more complex and larger, print debugging quickly becomes unfeasible.
    Using gdb and core files, you can easily cut your debugging time down. In this video, I'll be discussing a pet program that I wrote and using a core file to debug an issue with our program. We'll talk about how to get your program and kernel to produce a core file on segmentation fault, as well as a few techniques to debug C and C++.
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Комментарии • 669

  • @flamurmustafa522
    @flamurmustafa522 Год назад +1660

    For anyone who doesn’t know, in the older references, core meant memory, so when the core is dumped is actually writing the current state of memory into a file

    • @guilherme5094
      @guilherme5094 Год назад +3

      👍

    • @PeterJepson123
      @PeterJepson123 Год назад +137

      If I remember correctly, the term goes back to the 1950's when they used magnetic iron cores for memory. I'm sure I read it in a 'history of Unix' book of some sort.

    • @TalentGamer
      @TalentGamer Год назад +59

      @@PeterJepson123 read the same thing in "Unix - a History and a memoir" by Brian Kernighan. Recommend it to anyone interested in Computer and Software history

    • @tymscar
      @tymscar Год назад +8

      That is true! Lovely book all around. Kernighan is such an amazing person!

    • @kennethbeal
      @kennethbeal Год назад +4

      @@PeterJepson123 My mom worked on those back in her college days.

  • @maximkulkin2351
    @maximkulkin2351 11 месяцев назад +1334

    Print debugging still is the most universal way of debugging. You can do it local, you can do it remote you can do it in embedded, you can do it in a high volume processing code that would be just time consuming to step through (or when you don't know exactly where the problem is and can't put conditional breakpoints). Core files can only help with memory problems (when your code crashes), but won't help when it doesn't crash, but just produces wrong resutls.

    • @SerBallister
      @SerBallister 8 месяцев назад +109

      Prints are great at looking at long sequences of events too, which in a debugger can be quite difficult to setup several break-points and then have to poke around the entire local variable state at every break. Prints get straight to the point.

    • @KucheKlizma
      @KucheKlizma 7 месяцев назад +38

      @@TheGameMakeGuy Not just logfiles, quite often there's also options to place the software or a component into debug mode and have even more verbouse print debug outputs. In addition to also being able to generate a memory dump, a configuration dump and whatnot. Personally I think debugging should be proportional to the issue or risk at hand. I wouldn't read a core dump to find a misplaced closing bracket, but if a prod sever is crashing mysteriously when it's running on client hardware alongside other applications which naturally have not been perfectly tested for compatibility from development but aren't expected to cause issues then obviously a core dump becomes a highly appropriate troubleshooting option.

    • @jnharton
      @jnharton 6 месяцев назад +1

      You can also use /assertions/ if the language has that feature.

    • @jnharton
      @jnharton 6 месяцев назад +5

      @@SerBallisterIt does matter how you use them, though.
      You (the programmer) have to actually understand what the code should be doing so you can add only necessary print statements that let you follow the process and see where it went wrong.

    • @reynoldskynaston9529
      @reynoldskynaston9529 6 месяцев назад +10

      Yeah this core debugging is useful but doesn’t replace other forms of debugging.

  • @glowiak3430
    @glowiak3430 7 месяцев назад +383

    6:13 Fun fact, this is a mistake. As this array's length is 100, its maximum value is 99, so entering 100 will cause a crash anyway.

    • @JosefdeJoanelli
      @JosefdeJoanelli 6 месяцев назад +22

      I would have used >= 100

    • @glowiak3430
      @glowiak3430 6 месяцев назад +8

      @@JosefdeJoanelli Yes, but he didn't do it.

    • @JosefdeJoanelli
      @JosefdeJoanelli 6 месяцев назад

      ​@@glowiak3430I know

    • @chronxdev
      @chronxdev 6 месяцев назад +36

      Nice! I came to comments to see if anyone else caught this off-by-1 error

    • @johnbrooks5903
      @johnbrooks5903 6 месяцев назад +16

      I assume it was intentional to drive engagement, but yet here I am.

  • @dfs-comedy
    @dfs-comedy Год назад +518

    Core files and debuggers are indeed very useful. But honestly... the occasional debugging printf() is perfectly fine too. I've caught a lot of bugs that way without having to fire up a debugger.

    • @stevenspmd
      @stevenspmd Год назад +32

      Depending on the situation printf or equivalent might be only way without changing changing threading/timing. Running a full debugger isn't a light weight process.

    • @pikachuchujelly4119
      @pikachuchujelly4119 11 месяцев назад +10

      Sometimes, you just can't use gdb, like when trying to debug bare metal Raspberry Pi code, so you have to do print debugging over UART.

    • @quentinquadrat9389
      @quentinquadrat9389 8 месяцев назад +4

      Or LED blinking :) while the best gdb for bare metal is the oscilloscope :D Instead of printf I know preferring the dbg-macro library for C++

    • @Bagasl
      @Bagasl 6 месяцев назад

      @@pikachuchujelly4119 I'm using gdb to debug stm32, don't know what are you talking about

    • @jnharton
      @jnharton 6 месяцев назад

      @@pikachuchujelly4119 That might be the easiest option, but it's most assuredly not the only way. You could probably use the GPIO and LEDs too.

  • @DinoDiniProductions
    @DinoDiniProductions Год назад +154

    Debugging complex systems with time dependent interactions (user input, network connections, video game AI, user interfaces etc) are pretty much impossible with a debugger. The biggest problem here is that the debugger is extremely invasive in terms of time. You hit a break point and it literally freezes your entire application. This is a bit of an issue if you have code that interacts with real time things, which lets face it, is most of the difficult work in software engineering.
    I do use debuggers where I can and where it's the best tool for the matter at hand. But I am here objecting to the click-bait. Yes, please carry on using logging for debugging, as most debugging of complex systems really requires it.

    • @sverkeren
      @sverkeren Год назад +15

      or you could actually watch the video and realize that it's about post-mortem debugging of core dumps and not time invasive interactive debugging with breakpoints.

    • @everydaynova663
      @everydaynova663 6 месяцев назад +21

      @sverkeren Or you could realize that debugging tools or core dumps aren't the Swiss army knives of debugging and that a simple print statement may be the best option at the moment. Also, this video is advice for programming in C and may not be applicable to any programming language. Still fitting to call it clickbait

    • @neeneko
      @neeneko 6 месяцев назад +2

      @@everydaynova663 really, both techniques should be in your toolbelt. cores can tell you things that print statements can not, and print statements can tell you things dumps can not. dumps tell you where you are, prints tell you how you got there.

    • @DanielCordey
      @DanielCordey 5 месяцев назад

      Absolutely right !

    • @DinoDiniProductions
      @DinoDiniProductions 5 месяцев назад +3

      @@sverkeren ah, but I did not watch the video because I do not like clickbait. See...

  • @GiletteRazorsharp
    @GiletteRazorsharp Год назад +467

    Don't do "typedef unsigned int uint32_t". The size of an int is compiler dependant (although it usually is 32 bits). Include stdint.h if you *need* exact size integer types.

    • @absalomdraconis
      @absalomdraconis Год назад +24

      Yeah, stdint.h has been around for _how_ long now? Even VS 6 had some homebrew versions made for it at some point.

    • @biigsmokee
      @biigsmokee Год назад +36

      or just program in Rust

    • @cheems1337
      @cheems1337 Год назад +8

      @@dmitryhetman1509 ikr, Go ftw

    • @0xCAFEF00D
      @0xCAFEF00D Год назад +88

      @@biigsmokee if you've moved to Rust because of fixed width integer types you're probably not staying.

    • @NoahGooder
      @NoahGooder Год назад +4

      plus it makes your program more portable technically

  • @gariannobinger9933
    @gariannobinger9933 5 месяцев назад +10

    minor correction: "ulimit -c unlimited" means allow a core file be created with unlimited size, not "the kernel is allowed to produce an unlimited amount of core files"

  • @system64_MC
    @system64_MC Год назад +198

    6:04 I think I noticed a small error in the if statement
    the last index of an array is always the size of the array minus one because arrays starts at 0 (except in LUA). So the maximum index of the array is 99, and not 100. if you select a box with 100 as ID, your program will segfault because index 100 is out of bounds. To fix that, you have to either replace the ">" sign to ">=" sign, or you can do if (i > 99) { ... }.

    • @-wx-78-
      @-wx-78- Год назад +43

      Typical “off-by-one” error. Program perhaps won't segfault: static g_Boxes takes 6800 bytes, hence it'll span two 4 KiB pages with 1392 writable bytes left after it (speaking x86'ish).

    • @benedani9580
      @benedani9580 Год назад +21

      @@-wx-78- Yeah, but it might overwrite unrelated memory.

    • @-wx-78-
      @-wx-78- Год назад +9

      @@benedani9580 Definitely.

    • @Megamike144p
      @Megamike144p Год назад +20

      Indexes in LUA start at 1? Absolute madness.

    • @cliffmathew
      @cliffmathew Год назад +3

      For those unfamiliar with C: "@System64 MC" is correct - and the index should be checked against 99 or less. The index variable "i", declared as an "unsigned int" will not go below zero, so you don't have to worry about that. I could not see what the read_int() function does if the user inputs a negative number.

  • @abdox86
    @abdox86 Год назад +7

    Already using gdb on low level stuff, it’s ironic… thanks a lot man I’m really blessed by ur channel.

  • @anon_y_mousse
    @anon_y_mousse Год назад +39

    It would also be helpful to demonstrate how to write test cases and how best to separate into multiple modules. Also, you should check the number only once when read in from the user as well as stop using magic numbers. Might also want to demonstrate using `gdb` even if your program isn't crashing.

  • @ToyKeeper
    @ToyKeeper 5 месяцев назад +17

    After writing software for 40 years in many languages, from the highest to lowest levels, including patches to some of the software used in this video, here's what I've learned about debugging:
    1. The best debugging technique is to just read the code. If the code is too complex to trace in your head, it probably needs to be rewritten anyway.
    2. After that, nothing beats print style debugging. It's easy, simple, and works in almost any context.
    3. Debuggers and profilers are nice luxuries to have sometimes, but are frequently not feasible.

  • @gregorymorse8423
    @gregorymorse8423 Год назад +12

    This is very basic debugging for crashes but the video title sounded like more. Print statements to deal with non fatal errors are still quite useful.

    • @vastabyss6496
      @vastabyss6496 Месяц назад

      100% agree. This is probably the first comment I've seen from you where you don't sound angry lol

    • @gregorymorse8423
      @gregorymorse8423 Месяц назад +1

      @@vastabyss6496 I'm not angry generally. Just the way things come across via text on the web probably makes it seem that way.

  • @Boringpenguin
    @Boringpenguin Год назад +54

    This is super helpful for beginners as well! Thanks a lot!!

    • @LowLevelLearning
      @LowLevelLearning  Год назад +9

      You're so welcome!

    • @avg_user-dd2yb
      @avg_user-dd2yb Год назад +6

      @@LowLevelLearning can you make a tutorial on making basic interpreter and compilers using c,would be really helpful.

    • @windowsos-exestoppedworkin5391
      @windowsos-exestoppedworkin5391 Год назад +2

      I absolutely agree, I keep trying to write a compiler in C but I suck so I eventually give up and then I start over and the cycle repeats

    • @avg_user-dd2yb
      @avg_user-dd2yb Год назад

      @@windowsos-exestoppedworkin5391 iam just starting,Iam interested in low level programming stuff... high level languages and frameworks... They hide a lot of details.

    • @conorstewart2214
      @conorstewart2214 Год назад +1

      @@avg_user-dd2yb if you are interested then you should check out FPGAs, essentially reconfigurable hardware that you can use to make essentially any digital circuit like processors, the “game”, “Turing Complete” is good for this too, you start off making basic logic gates and latches and stuff and end up making a computer and programming it in assembly. If you are only interested in assembly then “Shenzhen IO” is good too.
      The most complete way to understand it at a very low level is to know how the processor itself works and be mostly able to build one.

  • @SneezewipeYT
    @SneezewipeYT Год назад +21

    Woah this is cool! I wish I'd known about this when I still wrote in C back in uni. Great video!

  • @icankickflipok
    @icankickflipok 3 месяца назад +11

    This man is the perfect programming RUclipsr for me. I’ve noticed lately at my uni in my courses that all the other students complain at an assignment/task that needs to be done in C (we’re in Operating Systems and we just wrote the first part of a shell where we had to create and implement the cd, pwd, and exit commands, now we’re going to exec the other commands as well as their arguments, and the whole class whined out loud when they were told that was the next assignment due next week. He also teased at the possibility of making us write our own memory allocator, which got even more audible rejection from the other students). However, I get excited at the thought of it. I love writing in C, I love the challenges it brings. My professor even pointed it out to me when I went to see him during his office hour to discuss getting an internship, how to go about it, what to prepare for, etc. that I seemed to really enjoy working at a low level close to the hardware. So, as a guy who seemingly loves writing low-level code, finding a programming RUclipsr whose channel name is literally “Low Level Learning” is the best thing that I’ve found on RUclips this year so far.

  • @xThirdOpsx
    @xThirdOpsx Год назад +9

    Great video Dave! Informative as always.

  • @darius0501
    @darius0501 Год назад +5

    if i knew this in my first year where i've learned trees and graphs in C imagine all the seg faults
    thank you for this!

  • @ishashka
    @ishashka Год назад +7

    When I switched from python and C# to C, one of the problems I had was that there's no stack traces when something goes wrong. But this is actually even more useful than a stack trace. Amazing

    • @stephenhookings1985
      @stephenhookings1985 Год назад +8

      The gdb gives you the stack traces. You could type backtrace or just bt from the core.
      You can also type where at a breakpoint.
      In our products we caught signals, then processed the exception - servers are NOT allowed to crash. There again in C++ there are lots of ways to better handle exceptions than in C.

    • @ishashka
      @ishashka Год назад +1

      @@stephenhookings1985 Yeah, I meant stack traces that print out automatically when there's an exception. I figured you can get that from gdb, but you have to know it's there.

    • @TheCustomFHD
      @TheCustomFHD 9 месяцев назад

      ​@@ishashkaor, you know how to find it. Manuals are amazing.

  • @dirivial_
    @dirivial_ Год назад +5

    What is the point of looking at the assembly instructions and register states? To me, it looked like you gained nothing from looking at them.

    • @tobiasmarzell330
      @tobiasmarzell330 Год назад +1

      That's correct. It was completely unnecessary for this example and probably is almost never necessary as the compiler usually knows pretty well what it does with how it uses the registers. If you ever happen to go that deep you most likely want to turn around and check your bug on a higher level.

  • @staceyschnee801
    @staceyschnee801 Год назад +57

    It's a whole lot harder to use the core file when a released product crashes (no debug symbols). It is also much harder to use core files to track down crashes in multi-threaded programs, and impossible if the problem is caused by a deadlock elsewhere in the code.

    • @anujmchitale
      @anujmchitale Год назад +18

      And absolutely not an option for me, programming for microcontrollers. 😂

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      Compiling with symbols only adds to the binary's size, but doesn't actually affect execution speed, as the runtime linker knows not to bind the debugging information into the process image, which is to say: binaries should always be built with debugging symbols embedded in them, they don't hurt runtime performance in any way, and the few milliseconds of loading time can very well save much misery later.

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      @@anujmchitale it is ALWAYS an option; you could compile with debugging information, then use (g)objdump to extract that information into a separate file, which you could then use if you need to debug the binary. You should never compile without generating debug symbols.

    • @anujmchitale
      @anujmchitale 17 дней назад

      @@AnnatarTheMaia A classic reply without knowing the slightest about the system that the person might be using.
      Debugging goes beyond the "binary" when talking about microcontrollers.
      It's the system as a whole that needs to be debugged, which includes hardware responses.
      This objdump approach doesn't work when doing realtime debugging on the microcontroller itself. If a kernel isn't running on it.

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      @@anujmchitale as someone who has learned to program by banging the hardware directly in the constrained system with only 64 KB of bank switched memory, on a microprocessor with only three eight bit registers, I thank you kindly for insulting me, and I want you to know that I took your response very personally.

  • @Sebastian-eb2ux
    @Sebastian-eb2ux Год назад +16

    Won't your program still crash for i = 100?

    • @MadaFakaTOO
      @MadaFakaTOO Год назад +2

      it will but it's just a small oversight on his part, it's not critical to the topic at hand

  • @decky1990
    @decky1990 Год назад

    I’m about to start using GDB in my codebase - thank you so much 👍🏻

  • @Avighna
    @Avighna Год назад +5

    Holy shit, this is so useful! I cannot tell you the number of hours I’ve spent tracking down sigsegvs! I didn’t even know the (core dumped) meant anything 😂

  • @StasPakhomov-wj1nn
    @StasPakhomov-wj1nn Год назад +5

    I've been patiently waiting till I finally stumbled across someone who explains these concepts as well as you. Thank you so much sir! I am so excited to learn with you :)

  • @Aeduo
    @Aeduo Год назад +1

    If you're using systemd, it'll hold on to some amount of cores, and coredumpctl will allow you to start a debugging session with any of those cores.

  • @ThatCowGuy
    @ThatCowGuy Год назад +11

    Wow, this was a really well presented video. I never used this feature before, because I thought stuff like that would be overkill in most scenarios. But the way you showcased it made it seem pretty handy, while note being as complicated as I imagined. I will definitely try this out next time I code something.

    • @lukaszkonsek7940
      @lukaszkonsek7940 Год назад +1

      Try gdb Save and reverse execution functionalities. It's pain to learn, but super usefull with the worst bugs.

  • @TheJaber288
    @TheJaber288 Год назад +2

    Really nice ! This is why I want to learn assembly it's really helpful in all cases

  • @sthex4640
    @sthex4640 9 месяцев назад +1

    I like how you said we can look at the assembly instructions to debug this and resigned from doing so as soon as you saw them

  • @annan_ma
    @annan_ma Год назад +60

    You should at least fix it properly with >= 100… instead of > 100

  • @metroid031993
    @metroid031993 6 месяцев назад +4

    Another way to avoid the print statements that get confusing is to use asserts. Forcibly fail when the conditions you're desiring aren't met, or the conditions you're seeing are. It's printf debugging but only one message prints, and it means it's much more comprehensible when something does go wrong. It doesn't always substitute a debugger, but they're good practice anyway, so it's a good idea to use them regardless of if you're debugging or not

  • @iluan_
    @iluan_ Год назад

    Super useful. Thank you very much :)

  • @nexovec
    @nexovec 11 месяцев назад +1

    I didn't know you can actually configure core like that. This is pretty useful.

  • @frroossst4267
    @frroossst4267 Год назад

    Half a semester of debugging seg faults, why did I not look this up earlier? THE PAIN!

  • @caiovini980
    @caiovini980 9 месяцев назад

    Hi, wanna know why do you have two naming patterns for your methods?
    read_int() and EditBox(), for example.
    Is there any technical reason for that?

  • @ronaldhofman1726
    @ronaldhofman1726 Год назад +1

    Good video , i just saw a video from Dave Plummer (ex Microsoft software engineer) and i learned to use the f_s functions all the other F functions are not safe, can bus buffer overflow , the new way so use prtinf_s, the video of Dave is called Stupid C tricks , i saw it and he's right , has to do witn functions not taken in account buffer lengts, and not checking them , not adding null remintator and so on, there are new functions and they have in common that they are named as the original functions but added with _s , these are safe functions can not induce a buffer overflow, good explanation also from Dave.

  • @deathreus
    @deathreus 6 месяцев назад +2

    For Windows fellows, the equivelant is a .dmp file that is either next to the program or some crashes folder, and Visual Studio would be used to open it

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      What's the Windows' equivalent of the runtime linker, ld.so.1?

  • @IsYitzach
    @IsYitzach 6 месяцев назад

    3:07 I was going to do what you did there to core_pattern but I found that apport already had a pattern in there. I'm concerned that if I did what you did, then I'd be messing with apport and that sound improper. Is there way to get the core dump for your programs where you can find it while leaving system error handling unaltered?

  • @ironspider5043
    @ironspider5043 Год назад +1

    You also can use the flag -fsanitize=address -g flag for these seg fault , buffer overflow, etc...

  • @rafaelpalmalima
    @rafaelpalmalima Год назад

    Thank you so much... it's really hard to find good content about gdb.

  • @CallousCoder
    @CallousCoder Год назад +53

    I believe there’s still a bug. You can enter 100 and it still crashes as the index is 0-99 😉I find it remarkable that you remember all the the commands. I always have to look em up. Then again I hardly debug, my code is usually error free 😅
    I actually just wrote my first ever C program on the Amiga to just open a window and draw random computed pixels. And not being able to run the binary on my Mac (Aros HDF required UAE version 4 which is not released on Mac yet). So I upload my cross compiled binary and awaited the first crash… but it worked, first time! Usually that’s a no go. Especially with a whole new windowing environment.

    • @akaikangaroo
      @akaikangaroo Год назад +2

      That's why one-indexed languages rule🙂

    • @CallousCoder
      @CallousCoder Год назад

      @@akaikangaroo Can you name ONE 😝🤪 And obviously I don’t agree because 0 makes sense because also memory starts at 0000 making it ONE is a silly western construct. Because we a westerners were too stupid to not define zero, unlike the Indian Al-Khowarizini did. For ever gatefuk to him, now programming zero index makes complete sense 😁

    • @akaikangaroo
      @akaikangaroo Год назад +3

      @@CallousCoder Lua, Julia and 18 more😜

    • @typingcat
      @typingcat Год назад +3

      When I saw that "i > 100" code, I immediately thought it was wrong and came to write a comment, but of course someone has already pointed it out. It should have been "i >= 100".

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      You code on the Amiga, that's why your programs are usually error free, because the Amiga shapes and reinforces correct programming. That explains a lot. Someone who has never programmed on the Amiga has no chance in hell of ever understanding why that is so. Good on you!

  • @richardsteiner8992
    @richardsteiner8992 6 месяцев назад

    I usually add a couple of debugging options to programs, even shell scripts, which enable either some basic logging or that plus an overkill data dump. That way I can trace behavior without code changes. A "debugger" isn't always viable for whatever reason.

  • @a.lollipop
    @a.lollipop 6 месяцев назад +1

    I never knew what "core dumped" meant, this makes so much more sense now! Thank you :)

    • @Brad_Script
      @Brad_Script 4 месяца назад

      core is archaic term for memory

  • @fahmitaib
    @fahmitaib Год назад

    this is so helpful, thanks!

  • @kuhluhOG
    @kuhluhOG Год назад

    Short question: Can the parent process define a special core pattern for its child process or must it always be system-wide?

  • @zfekete74
    @zfekete74 5 месяцев назад

    Nice syntax, I really like when someone takes care of readability and looks at the same time!

  • @DeathSugar
    @DeathSugar 6 месяцев назад +3

    Not always debugging used to fix crashes and sometimes gdb can't show proper backtraces due to absence of debug symbols or code version of the build. Also real-time tight programs will not let to stop themselves so prints is the only choice in many situations.

  • @flannelshirtdad
    @flannelshirtdad 6 месяцев назад +2

    For this simple example, printing i would have found the bug sooner. However, I do see that this can be useful for truly complex bugs, but not necessarily better than print statements.

  • @der.Schtefan
    @der.Schtefan Год назад +9

    Also, don't use scanf. Use the secure variants, and try to reject input as soon as it is parsed, not later on as per his example.

    • @TheCustomFHD
      @TheCustomFHD 9 месяцев назад

      Scanf with the right precautions works fine. Sure fscanf or whatever it was is technically better security wise, but is slower and lacks features. Just make sure to specify how much scanf is supposed to take in.

    • @plato4ek
      @plato4ek 9 месяцев назад +1

      What are the secure variants?

  • @emilemil1
    @emilemil1 6 месяцев назад

    Starting in debug mode often takes 2-3 times longer so a log is usually more efficient. I only reach for the debugger when logs fail or are too cumbersome.

  • @artik15xfilm
    @artik15xfilm Год назад +6

    Still allowing index 100 and that's bad too :P

  • @thatluminary
    @thatluminary Год назад +5

    Holy mother of valgrind, I was just struggling with debugging a program when you dropped this video...now my program works. Thanks :)

    • @LowLevelLearning
      @LowLevelLearning  Год назад +3

      Glad it helped!

    • @thatluminary
      @thatluminary Год назад +1

      @@LowLevelLearning I actually learned a lot about low level programming in this channel (your videos give me the necessary motivation to research a lot more)

  • @LunarLambda
    @LunarLambda 6 месяцев назад +11

    Something that print debugging allows, but no traditional debugger (to my knowledge) supports, is seeing how certain values in your program evolve over time, like in any kind of loop. Seeing the change over time allows me to figure out a potential pattern, and from there derive the issue way faster than most other traditional debugging techniques.
    This becomes even more valuable in a language like Rust which has really rich formatting support and prevents most types of crashes from the get go, so the majority of bugs I need to fix are logic bugs, where finding patterns is often pretty fast.

    • @sakuyarules
      @sakuyarules 3 месяца назад

      You can have debuggers stop every time a value changes for a variable. I think that does exactly what you're talking about.

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      "...is seeing how certain values in your program evolve over time, like in any kind of loop." DTrace is what you want. You can trace the program live while it is running, with no sideeffects on your program. You can even build your own DTrace probe points into your program, and they won't even affect performance, because they won't trigger unless DTrace is used... And if you're on Windows, Microsoft has just added support for DTrace...

  • @JorgenLundman
    @JorgenLundman Год назад

    I used printf debugging over the weekend, of course, it was in a M1 kext, so no core to get, and apple kext lldb is very poor on M1, and panic dump sending is broken. It's not always the wrong thing to do, if you have no other choice :) But when it works, it's a beautiful thing!

    • @breadone_
      @breadone_ Год назад

      although gdb doesnt work on m1 macs afaik, lldb is as good tho

    • @jakubrpawlowski
      @jakubrpawlowski 6 месяцев назад

      Yeah it's been years and still no gdb support on Apple silicon.

  • @Filaxsan
    @Filaxsan 9 месяцев назад

    Really cool and useful, thanks for sharing!

  • @Finkelfunk
    @Finkelfunk Год назад +33

    That is useful if your program crashes, but not as useful if it just doesn't work as intended. I'm still 100% certain that print statements are more or less a quick and easy way to manage all sorts of bugs. Yes, debuggers can be useful, logs too especially if you have a huge project, but other than that it's actually fairly easy to just use print-statements when there are issues.

    • @ironfist7789
      @ironfist7789 Год назад +7

      You don't need it to crash to use gdb, can run the program with gdb and step through the code as it runs, examine variables, etc. The core file is just for crashes after the fact. Like when run circlemud I type gdb bin/circle (the executable) and then type run inside of gdb.

    • @Finkelfunk
      @Finkelfunk Год назад

      @@ironfist7789 It's sad he didn't show iff that functionality then because these types of failures are more common I'd say

    • @ironfist7789
      @ironfist7789 Год назад +3

      @@Finkelfunk Yeah, but it is just kind of an introduction I guess. There are a lot of features and ways of compiling for less efficient executables but more debugging symbols, etc.

    • @gangulic
      @gangulic Год назад +3

      @@ironfist7789 using debuggers can cause different behaviour on some systems

    • @MrGryph78
      @MrGryph78 Год назад +1

      @@user-io4sr7vg1v of course it's UI is terrible, it's a CLI tool...

  • @maxp3141
    @maxp3141 6 месяцев назад +2

    Cool trick - I think I used this once a long time ago.
    Typically I just hit run on my IDE and it stops the debugger automatically on the line where the crash happens. Takes about 5 seconds to fix a bug like this.

  • @6754bettkitty
    @6754bettkitty 4 месяца назад

    Nice explanation of debugging. Thanks!

  • @carljones9640
    @carljones9640 5 месяцев назад

    Excellent tutorial. Although not a solution for every bug, it's still a great way to debug C memory-related issues.

  • @roshanrazor8634
    @roshanrazor8634 Год назад

    Awesome, great video!

  • @Blocktelligence
    @Blocktelligence Год назад

    Good stuff, man.

  • @terrorcomplainssometimes3969
    @terrorcomplainssometimes3969 Год назад

    ITS REALLY WORKED LOL THANK YOU DUDE

  • @arnavmohod9454
    @arnavmohod9454 Год назад +3

    Really it goes to the core!

  • @stera182
    @stera182 Год назад +2

    Hint : use sudo -i instead of sudo su. Same experience except all commands you’ll use can be logged properly as a sudo use.

  • @maaznaseer9706
    @maaznaseer9706 9 месяцев назад +2

    Or you can gcc -fsanitize=address to see where the segmentation dump core occurred, we use this method alot to understand where the pointer has failed. If not this, valgrind is the second choice of command to understand memory leaks.

  • @Saturate0806
    @Saturate0806 Год назад

    Can you do a video on how to add assertions and performing a core dump once they get hit on a remote target? :))

  • @quentinquadrat9389
    @quentinquadrat9389 8 месяцев назад +21

    For Linux C++ users, I really recommend compiling your project (-g -O0) against the backward-cpp library. You will have a nicely printed stack trace from your segfault. It is probably sufficient to understand where the bug comes from, else yes, use gdb and the core dump.

    • @lucass8119
      @lucass8119 6 месяцев назад +2

      cross platform stack traces were meant to be in C++20, but alas, the committee moves too slow. There is source_location, which you can use for debugging. source_location also doubles as a scrappy way to achieve compile-time reflection! You can extract class member's names as strings by abusing auto and source_location.

    • @swirl6996
      @swirl6996 6 месяцев назад +2

      use -fsanitize=address

    • @DefaultBoyBand
      @DefaultBoyBand Месяц назад

      -Og is better for debugging (just a tip)

    • @atijohn8135
      @atijohn8135 Месяц назад

      ​@@DefaultBoyBand -Og enables function inlining, so not exactly the best thing for stack traces, you need to additionally specify -fno-inline alongside it

    • @DefaultBoyBand
      @DefaultBoyBand Месяц назад

      @@atijohn8135 huh... didn't know that! thanks

  • @dtikvxcdgjbv7975
    @dtikvxcdgjbv7975 Год назад

    Useful. Nice introspective.

  • @corpseopera
    @corpseopera Год назад +1

    An address sanitizer compile with -g would help lots as well

  • @PeterJepson123
    @PeterJepson123 Год назад +13

    This is a great video thanks. I generally use ifdef debug printf() style to isolate an offending function and create a new entry point and test that function to destruction. The only debugging tool I've been using is valgrind --leak-check=full. This is great. Cheers mate.

  • @pstrusi
    @pstrusi Год назад

    I've noticed that you use Visual Studio Code for C. I'd like to have it again but after many problems, I had to return to Visual Studio. If you don't mind: do you have some video or blog that explains how to set Visual Studio Code for C in windows 10 ? It consumes much less hard drive space among other things. Thanks

  • @keithlambell1970
    @keithlambell1970 9 месяцев назад

    Thanks. That was a very useful demonstration.

  • @Codeaholic1
    @Codeaholic1 Год назад

    Wow today i learned why some say tack instead of dash. Interesting. Still makes my eye twitch every time I hear it.

  • @januzi2
    @januzi2 Год назад +2

    Well, "the box" was obviously a reference to the movie 7, and the "Dave" was a reference to the "2001: a space odyssey".
    Is there something like that for php as well, or do the test units have to do everything?

  • @henrymaddocks984
    @henrymaddocks984 Год назад

    What was that dive into the assembly for? Pretty random.

  • @BeenYT
    @BeenYT 9 месяцев назад

    i had a rendering program and i wanted to debug one part of a function which is called thrice for every pixel, i was confused why printf was making sdl not render the frames even though the printf was working, took me over an hour to realise i wrote code that was so slow i didnt even notice it was running

  • @originalni_popisovac
    @originalni_popisovac 11 месяцев назад +2

    2:01 yeah, hacking string with segment fault then u core dump and other things that i forgot

  • @TacoFace88
    @TacoFace88 Год назад +1

    What difference did the inclusion of the core file make? , it seems gdb-ing the program and the running it would produce the same result

    • @NostraDavid2
      @NostraDavid2 Год назад

      If your program takes some input and provides some output, you can then feed it input and when it crashes, you can check the core file, instead of running each instance inside of gdb.

  • @salut730
    @salut730 Год назад +1

    5:21, the mov instruction actually does the opposite of what you said, because it's in AT&T syntax.

  • @OskarP2601
    @OskarP2601 Год назад

    thanks! super useful.

  • @locusf2
    @locusf2 Год назад +12

    Ah, Seven reference.

    • @LowLevelLearning
      @LowLevelLearning  Год назад +1

      ayyy this guy gets it

    • @pqsk
      @pqsk 5 месяцев назад

      Took me a while to get it. Wow, thanks 😹😹😹

  • @sumitrangle5703
    @sumitrangle5703 Год назад

    Very helpful video. I think the core dump is for the linux machine you are running. Can we do the same for target microcontrollers. If yes, can you tell how to do it? Beginner here.

    • @TerabyteForever
      @TerabyteForever Год назад

      GDB has a remote debugging function that you can debug any application over network on your computer (provided that you have built a cross toolchain for the architecture).

    • @matthieusimon7836
      @matthieusimon7836 Год назад +1

      It depends on your microcontroller as well as which operating system, if any, you are running on it.
      GDB is pretty printing what the hardware is complaining about.
      Not a trivial answer to your question.

  • @nicholastheninth
    @nicholastheninth 8 месяцев назад

    Yes, but does it help if you forgot about the memory alignment requirements of SIMD instructions that end up giving you “access violation reading location 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF”?
    My compiler assumed it was aligned and generated aligned load instructions for an unaligned field. It clearly assumed wrong.

  • @AMildCaseOfCovid
    @AMildCaseOfCovid 6 месяцев назад +11

    I haven't tried a core dump, but as soon as he said "let's look at the assembly" my eyes glazed over. I'll stick with my print statements and debugger combo. I've never had to abandon my code and start over; that sounds nightmarish

    • @stevepreskitt283
      @stevepreskitt283 5 месяцев назад +3

      It's not as bad as you might think, and sometimes is the only way to actually find the problem. Several years back I had some code that worked fine when compiled for debug, but not when the symbols and such weren't there. After looking at the emitted assembly, it turned out my code was fine, and on this particular block of source, the compiler generated correct assembly if the debug symbols were enabled but not if they weren't. After sending the info to the vendor, they quietly fixed the bug in the next release. That's a VERY rare situation to come across, but still shows that being able to read the emitted assembly can be useful.

    • @AnnatarTheMaia
      @AnnatarTheMaia 17 дней назад

      You'll never be a good programmer until you've mastered assembler.

  • @TANRIninResulu
    @TANRIninResulu 11 месяцев назад

    gdb is built-in in xcode runtime for mac users if any bug exist in runtime of their compiled c code

  • @kennedymwangi5973
    @kennedymwangi5973 9 месяцев назад

    You are a life saver, thank you.

  • @bsykesbeats4013
    @bsykesbeats4013 4 месяца назад

    Love ur content. Is there any reason you typedef unsigned int uint32_t instead of using uint32_t from stdint.h?...i mean i guess one reason could be less overhead if you're not using the other ints from that library, but also you dont know if int is going to be 32 bits on all systems....

  • @stera182
    @stera182 Год назад

    Why do you put a return statement at the end of you void functions ?

  • @DennisJ42
    @DennisJ42 28 дней назад

    I've used vscode extensions for debugging and when i run with debugging it crashes and automatically goes to the line number and i can inspect call stack, parameters, variables etc.

  • @plasticcreations7836
    @plasticcreations7836 6 месяцев назад

    Ive spent 30 years working in software development and never had an issue with print debugging. In fact its got me out of many holes. And sometimes its the only option if running the code on the server is the only option and you aren't able to run a debugger or similar on the server.

  • @Nysvarth
    @Nysvarth 6 месяцев назад

    Nice tutorial on gdb, but wouldn't any IDE tell you the file and line number where the crash occurred anyway?

  • @billy-cg1qq
    @billy-cg1qq 6 месяцев назад +2

    I'll stay loyal to my prints, thank you

  • @electropantera
    @electropantera Год назад

    great video!

  • @guilherme5094
    @guilherme5094 Год назад

    Thanks👍👍!

  • @kamertonaudiophileplayer847
    @kamertonaudiophileplayer847 Год назад

    It is a great video, no more crashing. I need only Mac version of it.

  • @andrewgreen1970
    @andrewgreen1970 11 месяцев назад +3

    What I'm trying to understand here is how the values in rax and rdx gave away the nature of the issue.

  • @adam051838
    @adam051838 Год назад +2

    I'm confused at what looking at the registers gave us - you opened it and said what we were trying to do but didn't say anything about why that was bad or how we could use that information. Seems you could have just looked at the program .c file and gotten the information without looking at the assembly

  • @ThatJay283
    @ThatJay283 Месяц назад

    recently i've been using assert alot more, and that's been much better than print statements for some usecases

  • @aes0p895
    @aes0p895 6 месяцев назад +2

    RUclips programmers: COME OUT WITH YOUR PRINT STATEMENTS UP
    Me: You'll never take my print statements, copper! NEVER!

  • @givikap120
    @givikap120 2 месяца назад

    Okay, and what if you're curious how the function initially get this value that crashed this problem?
    Like if your error have multiple steps

  • @gzozulin
    @gzozulin Год назад +3

    You probably meant >= 100, if you will type 100 as a box id you will have the same SEGFAULT