Command completion

GDB can fill in the rest of a word in a command for you if there's only one possibility; it can also show you what the valid possibilities are for the next word in a command, at any time. This works for GDB commands, GDB subcommands, and the names of symbols in your program.

Press the Tab key whenever you want GDB to fill out the rest of a word. If there's only one possibility, GDB fills in the word, and waits for you to finish the command (or press Enter to enter it). For example, if you type:

(gdb) info bre Tab

GDB fills in the rest of the word breakpoints, since that is the only info subcommand beginning with bre:

(gdb) info breakpoints

You can either press Enter at this point, to run the info breakpoints command, or backspace and enter something else, if breakpoints doesn't look like the command you expected. (If you were sure you wanted info breakpoints in the first place, you might as well just type Enter immediately after info bre, to exploit command abbreviations rather than command completion).

If there's more than one possibility for the next word when you press Tab, GDB sounds a bell. You can either supply more characters and try again, or just press Tab a second time; GDB displays all the possible completions for that word. For example, you might want to set a breakpoint on a subroutine whose name begins with make_, but when you type:

b make_Tab

GDB just sounds the bell. Typing Tab again displays all the function names in your program that begin with those characters, for example:

make_a_section_from_file     make_environ               
make_abs_section             make_function_type         
make_blockvector             make_pointer_type          
make_cleanup                 make_reference_type        
make_command                 make_symbol_completion_list
(gdb) b make_

After displaying the available possibilities, GDB copies your partial input (b make_ in the example) so you can finish the command.

If you just want to see the list of alternatives in the first place, you can press Esc followed by ? (rather than press Tab twice).

Sometimes the string you need, while logically a “word”, may contain parentheses or other characters that GDB normally excludes from its notion of a word. To permit word completion to work in this situation, you may enclose words in ' (single quote marks) in GDB commands.

The most likely situation where you might need this is in typing the name of a C++ function. This is because C++ allows function overloading (multiple definitions of the same function, distinguished by argument type). For example, when you want to set a breakpoint you may need to distinguish whether you mean the version of name that takes an int parameter, name(int), or the version that takes a float parameter, name(float). To use the word-completion facilities in this situation, type a single quote ' at the beginning of the function name. This alerts GDB that it may need to consider more information than usual when you press Tab, or Esc followed by ?, to request word completion:

(gdb) b 'bubble(Esc?
bubble(double,double)    bubble(int,int)
(gdb) b 'bubble(

In some cases, GDB can tell that completing a name requires using quotes. When this happens, GDB inserts the quote for you (while completing as much as it can) if you don't type the quote in the first place:

(gdb) b bub Tab

GDB alters your input line to the following, and rings a bell:

(gdb) b 'bubble(

In general, GDB can tell that a quote is needed (and inserts it) if you haven't yet started typing the argument list when you ask for completion on an overloaded symbol.