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2.3 Shell commands

If you need to execute occasional shell commands during your debugging session, there is no need to leave or suspend GDB; you can just use the shell command.

shell command string

Invoke a standard shell to execute command string. If it exists, the environment variable SHELL determines which shell to run. Otherwise GDB uses the default shell (`/bin/sh' on Unix systems, `COMMAND.COM' on MS-DOS, etc.).

The utility make is often needed in development environments. You do not have to use the shell command for this purpose in GDB:

make make-args

Execute the make program with the specified arguments. This is equivalent to `shell make make-args'.