Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ukma!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!adm!xadmx!stanonik@nprdc.arpa
From: stanonik@nprdc.arpa (Ron Stanonik)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: dbx bug?
Message-ID: <17447@adm.BRL.MIL>
Date: 9 Nov 88 05:44:17 GMT
Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL
Lines: 26

We've run into a problem with dbx version 3.21 (and 3.4).
The "call" command doesn't seem to allow side effects.
For example, here's a program
	main()
	{
		char s[100];

		strcpy(s, "hello");
		puts(s);
	}
dbx this and run until the strcpy line (just to get the
variable s allocated).  Now type "call strcpy(s, "goodbye")".
We expected "print s" would return "goodbye", but instead
s is unchanged; ie, "".

Oddly, the following does what we expect, "call strcpy(&s[0], "goodbye")".
So, why doesn't it work for just s?

Is this a bug in dbx, or have we overlooked something in TFM.

By the way, we're running 4.3bsd on a vax 780.

Thanks,

Ron Stanonik
stanonik@nprdc.arpa