gdb: Value Sizes
10.23 Value Sizes
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Whenever GDB prints a value memory will be allocated within GDB to hold
the contents of the value. It is possible in some languages with
dynamic typing systems, that an invalid program may indicate a value
that is incorrectly large, this in turn may cause GDB to try and
allocate an overly large ammount of memory.
'set max-value-size BYTES'
'set max-value-size unlimited'
Set the maximum size of memory that GDB will allocate for the
contents of a value to BYTES, trying to display a value that
requires more memory than that will result in an error.
Setting this variable does not effect values that have already been
allocated within GDB, only future allocations.
There's a minimum size that 'max-value-size' can be set to in order
that GDB can still operate correctly, this minimum is currently 16
bytes.
The limit applies to the results of some subexpressions as well as
to complete expressions. For example, an expression denoting a
simple integer component, such as 'x.y.z', may fail if the size of
X.Y is dynamic and exceeds BYTES. On the other hand, GDB is
sometimes clever; the expression 'A[i]', where A is an array
variable with non-constant size, will generally succeed regardless
of the bounds on A, as long as the component size is less than
BYTES.
The default value of 'max-value-size' is currently 64k.
'show max-value-size'
Show the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will allocate
for the contents of a value.
Info Catalog
gdb: Searching Memory
gdb: Data