What are these symbols? 3

[jouell]

Sorry for the rookie question, but what is a symbol and what do they do, in regards to programming?

I can't find a decent answer on the net!

-John

 

[cpjust]

If you're talking about a symbol in terms of an error like: "Unresolved external symbol..." then it's referring to any type of variable, function or class name that you are using in your program, but you haven't defined anywhere. For example, if you have a function prototype, but you forgot to create the function body.

 

[Salem]

Symbols are basically the names you give to functions, variables, classes etc.


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[jouell]

Ok Thanks!

So why will microsoft ask you to "load symbols" to debug a problem? Are you seeing their variables?

-John

 

[PerFnurt]

>So why will microsoft ask you to "load symbols" to debug a problem? Are you seeing their variables?

Exactly. Seeing symbols (or their contents rather) is what debugging is all about.

Debug symbols are stored in .pdb files, so if you don't have the .pdb file for some module that's loaded during debugging, messages about 'symbols not found' (or similar) is displayed.

However that is only a problem if you're into to debugging that specific module, but normally you're more interested in your own module, which should have debug symbols (ie a .pdb file). If not - just make sure to perform a debug build of it.

/Per
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