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Data Inspection

You will solve this exercise starting from the inspect.c file located in the drills/tasks/inspect/support directory.

Given the following declarations:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    unsigned int a = 4127;
    int b = -27714;
    short c = 1475;
    int v[] = {0xCAFEBABE, 0xDEADBEEF, 0x0B00B135, 0xBAADF00D, 0xDEADC0DE};

    unsigned int *int_ptr = (unsigned int *) &v;

    for (int i = 0 ; i < sizeof(v) / sizeof(*int_ptr) ; ++i) {
        ++int_ptr;
    }

    return 0;
}

Compile the source code and run the executable with GDB. Set a breakpoint at main and observe how the data is represented in memory. For this task, you will use the print and examine commands.

NOTE:

  • To display the value of a variable in hexadecimal, use p/x variable_name
  • To display the value from a pointer, use p *pointer_name, and to inspect the data at a memory address, use x memory_address.

If you're having difficulties solving this exercise, go through this reading material.