22.11 Other Miscellaneous Settings

set interactive-mode

If on, forces GDB to assume that GDB was started in a terminal. In practice, this means that GDB should wait for the user to answer queries generated by commands entered at the command prompt. If off, forces GDB to operate in the opposite mode, and it uses the default answers to all queries. If auto (the default), GDB tries to determine whether its standard input is a terminal, and works in interactive-mode if it is, non-interactively otherwise.

In the vast majority of cases, the debugger should be able to guess correctly which mode should be used. But this setting can be useful in certain specific cases, such as running a MinGW GDB inside a cygwin window.

show interactive-mode

Displays whether the debugger is operating in interactive mode or not.

set suppress-cli-notifications

If on, command-line-interface (CLI) notifications that are printed by GDB are suppressed. If off, the notifications are printed as usual. The default value is off. CLI notifications occur when you change the selected context or when the program being debugged stops, as detailed below.

User-selected context changes:

When you change the selected context (i.e. the current inferior, thread and/or the frame), GDB prints information about the new context. For example, the default behavior is below:

(gdb) inferior 1
[Switching to inferior 1 [process 634] (/tmp/test)]
[Switching to thread 1 (process 634)]
#0  main () at test.c:3
3         return 0;
(gdb)

When the notifications are suppressed, the new context is not printed:

(gdb) set suppress-cli-notifications on
(gdb) inferior 1
(gdb)

The program being debugged stops:

When the program you are debugging stops (e.g. because of hitting a breakpoint, completing source-stepping, an interrupt, etc.), GDB prints information about the stop event. For example, below is a breakpoint hit:

(gdb) break test.c:3
Breakpoint 2 at 0x555555555155: file test.c, line 3.
(gdb) continue
Continuing.

Breakpoint 2, main () at test.c:3
3         return 0;
(gdb)

When the notifications are suppressed, the output becomes:

(gdb) break test.c:3
Breakpoint 2 at 0x555555555155: file test.c, line 3.
(gdb) set suppress-cli-notifications on
(gdb) continue
Continuing.
(gdb)

Suppressing CLI notifications may be useful in scripts to obtain a reduced output from a list of commands.

show local-environment [varname]

Print the value of the local environment variable varname. If you do not supply varname, print the names and values of all local environment variables. A local environment variable is used when GDB executes a local command, such as by the shell command.

set local-environment varname [=value]

Set environment variable varname to value. The value changes for GDB itself. The value may be any string; the values of environment variables are just strings, and any interpretation is supplied by your program itself. The value parameter is optional; if it is eliminated, the variable is set to a null value.

unset local-environment varname

Remove variable varname from the local environment. This is different from ‘set local-environment varname =’; unset local-environment removes the variable from the environment, rather than assigning it an empty value.

show suppress-cli-notifications

Displays whether printing CLI notifications is suppressed or not.