2.3 Shell Commands

If you need to execute occasional shell commands during your debugging session, there is no need to leave or suspend GDB; you can just use the shell command.

shell command-string

!command-string

Invoke a standard shell to execute command-string. Note that no space is needed between ! and command-string. If it exists, the environment variable SHELL determines which shell to run. Otherwise GDB uses the default shell (/bin/sh on Unix systems, COMMAND.COM on MS-DOS, etc.).

The utility make is often needed in development environments. You do not have to use the shell command for this purpose in GDB:

make make-args

Execute the make program with the specified arguments. This is equivalent to ‘shell make make-args’.