When debugging or linking, what does the word "symbol" refer to?

Question

I am doing some work with gdb and have found references in the documentation to "symbols". Is this another word for externally (exported) visible variables ?

Thanks,

Scott

Answer 1

A 'symbol' is a symbolic identifier including function and variable names.

The compiler/linker create a symbol table during the build and this is used by the debugger to provide source-level symbolic names to these entities, as opposed to plain addresses (hence the name "symbolic debugger" which you may come across).