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23.2.2.22 Program Spaces In Python

A program space, or progspace, represents a symbolic view of an address space. It consists of all of the objfiles of the program. See Objfiles In Python. See program spaces, for more details about program spaces.

The following progspace-related functions are available in the gdb module:

— Function: gdb.current_progspace ()

This function returns the program space of the currently selected inferior. See Inferiors and Programs.

— Function: gdb.progspaces ()

Return a sequence of all the progspaces currently known to gdb.

Each progspace is represented by an instance of the gdb.Progspace class.

— Variable: Progspace.filename

The file name of the progspace as a string.

— Variable: Progspace.pretty_printers

The pretty_printers attribute is a list of functions. It is used to look up pretty-printers. A Value is passed to each function in order; if the function returns None, then the search continues. Otherwise, the return value should be an object which is used to format the value. See Pretty Printing API, for more information.

— Variable: Progspace.type_printers

The type_printers attribute is a list of type printer objects. See Type Printing API, for more information.

— Variable: Progspace.frame_filters

The frame_filters attribute is a dictionary of frame filter objects. See Frame Filter API, for more information.

One may add arbitrary attributes to gdb.Progspace objects in the usual Python way. This is useful if, for example, one needs to do some extra record keeping associated with the program space.

In this contrived example, we want to perform some processing when an objfile with a certain symbol is loaded, but we only want to do this once because it is expensive. To achieve this we record the results with the program space because we can't predict when the desired objfile will be loaded. 

     (gdb) python
     def clear_objfiles_handler(event):
         event.progspace.expensive_computation = None
     def expensive(symbol):
         """A mock routine to perform an "expensive" computation on symbol."""
         print "Computing the answer to the ultimate question ..."
         return 42
     def new_objfile_handler(event):
         objfile = event.new_objfile
         progspace = objfile.progspace
         if not hasattr(progspace, 'expensive_computation') or \
                 progspace.expensive_computation is None:
             # We use 'main' for the symbol to keep the example simple.
             # Note: There's no current way to constrain the lookup
             # to one objfile.
             symbol = gdb.lookup_global_symbol('main')
             if symbol is not None:
                 progspace.expensive_computation = expensive(symbol)
     gdb.events.clear_objfiles.connect(clear_objfiles_handler)
     gdb.events.new_objfile.connect(new_objfile_handler)
     end
     (gdb) file /tmp/hello
     Reading symbols from /tmp/hello...done.
     Computing the answer to the ultimate question ...
     (gdb) python print gdb.current_progspace().expensive_computation
     42
     (gdb) run
     Starting program: /tmp/hello
     Hello.
     [Inferior 1 (process 4242) exited normally]