• Defining temporary variables may help make commands shorter and easier to read.

• In gdb, run set $<NEWVAR> = <CMD> to define a new variable <NEWVAR>

  • E.g. If under the current context there is a vector named items, we can create a variable firstItem to point to its first element as follows:

    set $firstItem = *(items._M_impl._M_start+0)
    

  • The $ sign is crucial; without the $ sign, gdb will look for a variable with the given name from within the program being run.

References:

• https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Convenience-Vars.html