lldb breakpoint on all methods in class objective c

Question

How can I automate setting a breakpoint on all methods in an Objective C class using lldb?

This is useful for learning the behavior of a complicated legacy class. I am using Xcode (includes lldb) for iOS development, and it is cumbersome to manually go through the (large) file in Xcode and click the gutter next to each method to set breakpoints.

Answer 1

One option is to use regex breakpoints.

breakpoint set -r '\[ClassName .*\]$'

You can play around with the regexp to suit your needs.

The command will create a breakpoint that stops on all methods implemented by that class. However, there will be no breakpoints on methods inherited from superclasses.

To get methods on the superclass, you'll have to use a conditional breakpoint. For example, if the superclass is UIViewController, you could do something like:

br s -r '\[UIViewController .*\]$' -c '(BOOL)[(id)$arg1 isKindOfClass:[CustomVC class]]'

For x86 change (id)$arg1 to *(id*)($ebp+8).

Finally, if you really want to learn about the control flow through various classes, check out dtrace. It's probably more suited to this than a debugger.