5.6: Debugger

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The debugger(For more information, refer to: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) is used to control execution of a program. This allows for testing and debugging activities to be performed.

In the previous example, the program computed a series of calculations, but did not output any of the results. The debugger can be used to check the results. The executable file is created with the assemble and link command previously described and must include the -g option.

The debugger used is the GNU DDD debugger which provides a visual front-end for the GNU command line debugger, gdb. The DDD web site and documentation are noted in the references section of Chapter 1, Introduction.

Due to the complexity and importance of the debugger, a separate chapter for the debugging is provided.