How to inspect 'super' when debugging objc in gdb

Question

From within xcode, gdb gives the following:

> po self
<SomeClassName: 0x6672e50>

So far so good... But:

> po super
No symbol "super" in current context.

In the interest of clarity, what I really want to do is send a message to super while debugging. For example, I want to do something like this:

> po [super doSomething]

But how do I reference super from within the gdb environment? Thanks!

Answer 1

Something to keep in mind here, is that super == self. It's the same object pointer, but the super keyword tells the message dispatch code to start looking for an implementation one level back in the class hierarchy.

Answer 2

Hey, we were just talking about this! The word super doesn't have any effect except as the receiver of a message, i.e., [super doSomething]. It's just a note to the compiler that it should search for the implementation of a method in the superclass rather than the current class object.

If you want an object's actual superclass object, use the NSObject protocol's superclass method: [self superclass].

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I don't know how to do exactly what you want. How about a debugger hook? Put this into your class:

- (void) callSupersDoSomething {
    [super doSomething];
}

and then you can call [self callSupersDoSomething] from the debugger.