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<title>Debugging with GDB: Ada Mode Intro</title>

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<a name="Ada-Mode-Intro"></a>
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<a name="Introduction"></a>
<h4 class="subsubsection">15.4.9.1 Introduction</h4>
<a name="index-Ada-mode_002c-general"></a>

<p>The Ada mode of <small>GDB</small> supports a fairly large subset of Ada expression 
syntax, with some extensions.
The philosophy behind the design of this subset is 
</p>
<ul>
<li> That <small>GDB</small> should provide basic literals and access to operations for 
arithmetic, dereferencing, field selection, indexing, and subprogram calls, 
leaving more sophisticated computations to subprograms written into the
program (which therefore may be called from <small>GDB</small>).

</li><li> That type safety and strict adherence to Ada language restrictions
are not particularly important to the <small>GDB</small> user.

</li><li> That brevity is important to the <small>GDB</small> user.
</li></ul>

<p>Thus, for brevity, the debugger acts as if all names declared in
user-written packages are directly visible, even if they are not visible
according to Ada rules, thus making it unnecessary to fully qualify most
names with their packages, regardless of context.  Where this causes
ambiguity, <small>GDB</small> asks the user&rsquo;s intent.
</p>
<p>The debugger will start in Ada mode if it detects an Ada main program. 
As for other languages, it will enter Ada mode when stopped in a program that
was translated from an Ada source file.
</p>
<p>While in Ada mode, you may use &lsquo;<tt>--</tt>&rsquo; for comments.  This is useful 
mostly for documenting command files.  The standard <small>GDB</small> comment 
(&lsquo;<samp>#</samp>&rsquo;) still works at the beginning of a line in Ada mode, but not in the 
middle (to allow based literals).
</p>
<p>The debugger supports limited overloading.  Given a subprogram call in which
the function symbol has multiple definitions, it will use the number of 
actual parameters and some information about their types to attempt to narrow
the set of definitions.  It also makes very limited use of context, preferring
procedures to functions in the context of the <code>call</code> command, and
functions to procedures elsewhere. 
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