User`s guide

Stepping Through Machine Code

The formats of the nexti and stepi commands are:

nexti [integer] Executes the speciﬁed number of machine instructions,

stepping over procedures. If you do not provide an

argument,nexti executes one instruction. If nexti encounters

any breakpoints, even in procedures that it steps over, it

immediately stops execution.

stepi Single steps one machine instruction, stepping into

procedures (as called by jal and jalr). If stepi encounters any

breakpoints, it immediately stops execution.

stepi [n] Executes the speciﬁed number of machine instructions,

stepping into procedures (as called by jal and jalr).

The values of the dbx variable $stepintoall affects the stepi and nexti

commands just as they do the step and next commands. See “Stepping

Through Your Program” on page 78 for a discussion of these variables.

For the stepj command, dbx determines the next jump by reading through the

instructions until it ﬁnds a jump or jal machine instruction. Because it ignores

conditional branches, it does not necessarily follow the sequence of the

program’s execution to ﬁnd the “next” jump. This means that it may not stop

where you expect.