SAS/C Software: Changes and Enhancements, Release 6.50

Minor Enhancements, Incompatibilities, and Corrections

This section describes the minor enhancements and incompatibilities in Release 5.50 of the SAS/C Debugger, and errors in the Release 5.50 debugger documentation.

Minor Enhancements

The following minor enhancements to the SAS/C Debugger are introduced with Release 5.50:

When displaying storage, the debugger now takes program AMODE into account. If the program is in AMODE 24, the high-order byte of a pointer is ignored when using that pointer to address memory. This purification only takes place when pointers are dereferenced. This means that, for example, the command dump 0p04c78000 always dumps memory at the address specified, even if the C program is running in AMODE 24. But, for an AMODE 24 program, if a pointer variable p contains this value, then the command dump p displays the contents of 0pc78000.
The line number area of the Source window has been widened by one character. It was five characters wide; now it is six characters wide.
The maximum value of the M argument of the window context source N M command is now 0x7fffffff.
The list command now supports line numbers greater than 64K.
The format of the output of the print command when directed to the Log window is the same as when directed to the Print window. Therefore, the command print expression, where the expression argument is the name of an array, prints all the elements of the array. A format, if specified, applies to each individual element, except for character arrays with s format specifications.
Line hooks now support line numbers greater than 65536.
If a variable of file scope is hidden by a variable of more local scope, the file scope variable can be accessed in any command that supports expressions by using the C++ unary operator ::. For example:
```
print ::xyz
```
The whatis command can be used to examine the types of class members by using the C++ binary operator ::. For example:
```
whatis my_struct::member_name
```
Specifying the struct, union, or enum keyword when using a cast in an expression is optional.
If you are intercepting output in the Termout window with pause turned on, then at program completion time if there is any output that you have not seen, the debugger stops to let you view it.
If you issue an auto cxx command, the debugger automatically saves the current status of auto command's extname keyword and turns on auto extname. When auto cxx is turned off, the most recently saved value of extname is restored. auto extname cannot be turned off while auto cxx is on. The query command displays the state of the cxx keyword. The transfer command supports the cxx keyword. If all auto command settings are transferred, cxx appears between extname and linesize.

Minor Incompatibilities

The following is a list of incompatibilities between Release 5.50 of the SAS/C Debugger and previous releases:

The window memory command now takes an additional argument representing the amount of memory used for buffers for each invocation of the Browse window. The debugger does not accept old-style window memory commands because they are now syntactically invalid. The simplest solution to avoid repetitive warning messages is to save the configuration with a config save command the first time the Release 5.50 debugger is invoked. The Config window contains an additional field that is used to specify the amount of memory associated with the Browse window.
If the extended line-number information is not available for a compilation, function line numbers are parenthesized to represent compilation number.
The default value of the auto linesize command is changed to 75. (It was 78.)
With the introduction of the cxx keyword to the auto command, the minimum lengths you can specify for the cmacros and nocmacros keywords of the autos command are now 2 and 4 respectively.
Support for (PTYPE) in Format 3 of the print command has been dropped. With the introduction of casts in expressions, there is no longer a need for this method of casting.
The function-name:type format of the expression argument is no longer supported. The scope command in Release 5.00 provides similar functionality.
There are no limits to the length of identifiers that the debugger can process.
Debugger error output goes to DDname DBGTERM under MVS batch.
The screen is refreshed after completion of execution of the system and escape commands.
The query command displays the ignore signal command as ignore <all signals>.

Minor Corrections

The documentation for the resume command should say in the SCOPE section that the command is affected by scope.

Chapter Contents
Previous
Next
Top of Page