Debugging with GDB: Disabling

Debugging with GDB: Disabling

5.1.5 Disabling Breakpoints

Rather than deleting a breakpoint, watchpoint, or catchpoint, you might prefer to disable it. This makes the breakpoint inoperative as if it had been deleted, but remembers the information on the breakpoint so that you can enable it again later.

You disable and enable breakpoints, watchpoints, and catchpoints with the enable and disable commands, optionally specifying one or more breakpoint numbers as arguments. Use info break to print a list of all breakpoints, watchpoints, and catchpoints if you do not know which numbers to use.

Disabling and enabling a breakpoint that has multiple locations affects all of its locations.

A breakpoint, watchpoint, or catchpoint can have any of several different states of enablement:

Enabled. The breakpoint stops your program. A breakpoint set with the break command starts out in this state.
Disabled. The breakpoint has no effect on your program.
Enabled once. The breakpoint stops your program, but then becomes disabled.
Enabled for a count. The breakpoint stops your program for the next N times, then becomes disabled.
Enabled for deletion. The breakpoint stops your program, but immediately after it does so it is deleted permanently. A breakpoint set with the tbreak command starts out in this state.

You can use the following commands to enable or disable breakpoints, watchpoints, and catchpoints:

disable [breakpoints] [ list…]: Disable the specified breakpoints—or all breakpoints, if none are listed. A disabled breakpoint has no effect but is not forgotten. All options such as ignore-counts, conditions and commands are remembered in case the breakpoint is enabled again later. You may abbreviate disable as dis.
enable [breakpoints] [ list…]: Enable the specified breakpoints (or all defined breakpoints). They become effective once again in stopping your program.
enable [breakpoints] once list…: Enable the specified breakpoints temporarily. GDB disables any of these breakpoints immediately after stopping your program.
enable [breakpoints] count count list…: Enable the specified breakpoints temporarily. GDB records count with each of the specified breakpoints, and decrements a breakpoint’s count when it is hit. When any count reaches 0, GDB disables that breakpoint. If a breakpoint has an ignore count (see Break Conditions), that will be decremented to 0 before count is affected.
enable [breakpoints] delete list…: Enable the specified breakpoints to work once, then die. GDB deletes any of these breakpoints as soon as your program stops there. Breakpoints set by the tbreak command start out in this state.

Except for a breakpoint set with tbreak (see Setting Breakpoints), breakpoints that you set are initially enabled; subsequently, they become disabled or enabled only when you use one of the commands above. (The command until can set and delete a breakpoint of its own, but it does not change the state of your other breakpoints; see Continuing and Stepping.)