Input redirection in gdb (MinGW)

Question

I'm trying to get gdb to run programs with input redirection to stdin. For example, without gdb I would run a program like this:

prog < input.txt

Now in gdb, the usual way to do this is run < input.txt. However, it doesn't work for me and when doing this nothing gets redirected into stdin.

I'm using Windows with MinGW. What could be the problem?

Answer 1

As far back as the late '90s, broken command line redirection was a known and assumed limitation. My suspicion is that it remains that way, since the mingw32 port of gdb still gleefully passes on verbatim all run arguments (including redirects) to the debugee.

Several possible workarounds:

1. if you have the option to alter the command line interface, then implement bbadour's suggestion
2. otherwise, if you can easily suspend the process before the point you want to debug at, invoke the debugee (with redirection) from a shell and attach to it while it is already running

3. otherwise, if you have symbols for the debugee (gcc -g) or you know the address of main() (gcc -Wl,-Map,mapfile) and can set a breakpoint there, proceed in the following manner (tested with mingw gdb 6.8.0):

   # gdb debugee.exe
   (gdb) b main
   (gdb) run non-redirect-arguments-if-any
   (gdb) p dup2(open("/tmp/input.txt", 0), 0) 
   (gdb) c