The environment consists of a set of environment variables and
their values. Environment variables conventionally record such things as
your user name, your home directory, your terminal type, and your search
path for programs to run. Usually you set up environment variables with
the shell and they are inherited by all the other programs you run. When
debugging, it can be useful to try running your program with a modified
environment without having to start gdb over again.
path directory
Add directory to the front of the PATH environment variable
(the search path for executables) that will be passed to your program.
The value of PATH used by gdb does not change.
You may specify several directory names, separated by whitespace or by a
system-dependent separator character (: on Unix, ; on
MS-DOS and MS-Windows). If directory is already in the path, it
is moved to the front, so it is searched sooner.
You can use the string $cwd to refer to whatever is the current
working directory at the time gdb searches the path. If you
use . instead, it refers to the directory where you executed the
path command. gdb replaces . in the
directory argument (with the current path) before adding
directory to the search path.
show paths
Display the list of search paths for executables (the PATH
environment variable).
show environment [varname]
Print the value of environment variable varname to be given to
your program when it starts. If you do not supply varname,
print the names and values of all environment variables to be given to
your program. You can abbreviate environment as env.
set environment varname [=value]
Set environment variable varname to value. The value
changes for your program only, not for gdb itself. value may
be any string; the values of environment variables are just strings, and
any interpretation is supplied by your program itself. The value
parameter is optional; if it is eliminated, the variable is set to a
null value.
For example, this command:
set env USER = foo
tells the debugged program, when subsequently run, that its user is named
foo. (The spaces around = are used for clarity here; they
are not actually required.)
unset environment varname
Remove variable varname from the environment to be passed to your
program. This is different from set env varname =;
unset environment removes the variable from the environment,
rather than assigning it an empty value.
Warning: On Unix systems, gdb runs your program using
the shell indicated
by your SHELL environment variable if it exists (or
/bin/sh if not). If your SHELL variable names a shell
that runs an initialization file--such as .cshrc for C-shell, or
.bashrc for BASH--any variables you set in that file affect
your program. You may wish to move setting of environment variables to
files that are only run when you sign on, such as .login or
.profile.
