GDB: hexadecimal dump

Displaying patterns in corrupted memory helps identifying errors. Here is how to use xxd from within GDB.

It could be adapted to any kind of 'memory transmogrifier' that would marshall bytes for human eyes.

define xxd
dump binary memory dump.bin ((char*)$arg0) ((char*)$arg0)+$arg1
shell xxd dump.bin
end

Note: $arg0 is coerced to type (char *) to ensure pointer arithmetic remains byte-wise. This allows the first argument to be a pointer to anything, without having to take the raw address. The second argument will be the number of bytes dumped.

Usage

(gdb) p N * sizeof(keys[0])
$3 = 64
(gdb) xxd keys 64
00000000: 3df2 a3ef 2f43 67ad 6eb4 52e5 a19d 3ac8  =.../Cg.n.R...:.
00000010: a6fc 50ea c48e 4c4d 4e71 184e 96bb 0346  ..P...LMNq.N...F
00000020: ee06 5d1f eebc 934f c97d c239 74b8 17b9  ..]....O.}.9t...
00000030: 78f0 3a8d a2a5 86b5 5b72 6847 8aef 456d  x.:.....[rhG..Em