DBX is a proprietary source-level debugger

Debugger

A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...

 found primarily on Solaris, AIX

AIX operating system

AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...

, IRIX

IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

, Tru64 UNIX

Tru64 UNIX

Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture , currently owned by Hewlett-Packard . Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation , where it was known as Digital UNIX .As its original name suggests, Tru64...

, GNU/Linux and BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...

 operating systems. It provides symbolic debugging for programs written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

, C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, Pascal, Fortran

Fortran

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...

 and Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

. Useful features include stepping through programs one source line

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 or machine instruction at a time. In addition to simply viewing operation of the program, variables

Variable (programming)

In computer programming, a variable is a symbolic name given to some known or unknown quantity or information, for the purpose of allowing the name to be used independently of the information it represents...

 can be manipulated and a wide range of expressions can be evaluated and displayed.

DBX was originally developed at University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, by Mark Linton and subsequently made its way to various vendors who had licensed BSD. It has also found its way into other products:

• DBX is also available on IBM
  IBM
  International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
  
   z/OS
  Z/OS
  z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for mainframe computers, produced by IBM. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn followed a string of MVS versions.Starting with earliest:*OS/VS2 Release 2 through Release 3.8...
  
   systems, in the UNIX System Services
  UNIX System Services
  UNIX System Services is a required, included component of z/OS. USS is a certified UNIX implementation optimized for mainframe architecture. It is the first UNIX 95 to not be derived from the AT&T source code...
  
   component. DBX for z/OS can debug programs written in C and C++, and can also perform machine level debugging. As of z/OS V1R5, DBX is able to debug programs using the DWARF
  DWARF
  DWARF is a widely used, standardized debugging data format. DWARF was originally designed along with Executable and Linkable Format , although it is independent of object file formats...
  
   debug format. z/OS V1R6 added support for debugging 64-bit
  64-bit
  64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...
  
   programs.
• DBX is included as part of the Oracle Solaris Studio product from Oracle Corporation
  Oracle Corporation
  Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
  
  , and is supported on both Solaris and GNU/Linux. It supports programs compiled with the Oracle Solaris Studio compilers and GCC
  GNU Compiler Collection
  The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
  
  .

External links

• dbx for z/OS
• Sun Studio Compilers and Tools for Solaris OS and Linux
  • Sun Studio 12: Debugging a Program With dbx