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<h5 class="subsubsection">15.4.7.1 Introduction</h5>

<p><a name="index-Ada-mode_002c-general-860"></a>
The Ada mode of <span class="sc">gdb</span> supports a fairly large subset of Ada expression
syntax, with some extensions. 
The philosophy behind the design of this subset is

     <ul>
<li>That <span class="sc">gdb</span> should provide basic literals and access to operations for
arithmetic, dereferencing, field selection, indexing, and subprogram calls,
leaving more sophisticated computations to subprograms written into the
program (which therefore may be called from <span class="sc">gdb</span>).

     <li>That type safety and strict adherence to Ada language restrictions
are not particularly important to the <span class="sc">gdb</span> user.

     <li>That brevity is important to the <span class="sc">gdb</span> user. 
</ul>

   <p>Thus, for brevity, the debugger acts as if all names declared in
user-written packages are directly visible, even if they are not visible
according to Ada rules, thus making it unnecessary to fully qualify most
names with their packages, regardless of context.  Where this causes
ambiguity, <span class="sc">gdb</span> asks the user's intent.

   <p>The debugger will start in Ada mode if it detects an Ada main program. 
As for other languages, it will enter Ada mode when stopped in a program that
was translated from an Ada source file.

   <p>While in Ada mode, you may use `<tt>&ndash;</tt>' for comments.  This is useful
mostly for documenting command files.  The standard <span class="sc">gdb</span> comment
(&lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">#</span></samp>&rsquo;) still works at the beginning of a line in Ada mode, but not in the
middle (to allow based literals).

   <p>The debugger supports limited overloading.  Given a subprogram call in which
the function symbol has multiple definitions, it will use the number of
actual parameters and some information about their types to attempt to narrow
the set of definitions.  It also makes very limited use of context, preferring
procedures to functions in the context of the <code>call</code> command, and
functions to procedures elsewhere.

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