[Lazarus] Debugging fixed strings in UTF8 encoding

[Martin]

On 29/03/2013 01:18, Ernest V Miller wrote:
>
>>
>> There are 2 issues (in what I reproduced):
>>
>> 1) *** "???"
>>
>> Actually the "?" are really present in the string. They are put there by
>> Utf8ToAnsi for characters that could not be translated to ansi. So in
>> that the debugger shows the correct content.
>>
>> At least that happens with the chars I used for testing:
>        Despite the fact that each character of 'Кукла' is represented in
> ansi, Utf8ToAnsi gives ? in exchange for every normal ansi symbol.
>        Interesting thing is that further call of
>              AnsiToUtf8(ansi);  //ansi contains '?????' as a result of
> previous Utf8ToAnsi('Кукла') conversion
>        returns 'Кукла' again, not '?????'.
>
>

Ok, than you have an error that I can not reproduce on my system.  I 
made my observation from reproducing the effects on my system as close 
as I can get to it.
For me GDB never did the ??? thing.

Can you generate a log please 
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/GDB_Debugger_Tips#Log_info_for_debug_session

The above sting in 4 versions: utf8 and ansi both for unlimited strings 
and string[x]
And the source, so I can see what is what.

Is your ansi a multibyte ansi? Maybe GDB does not understand that? (just 
a wild guess)


Also:
Are you on Windows? Which one?
32 or 64 bit?
which version of GDB? (If you do the log, I can find it from that)

Can you try (including another log) using a newer GDB
* win 32 bit:
- IDE comes with 7.2-1
- go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Extension/gdb/
* win 64 bit
- IDE (not sure) IIRC 7.3.5
- http://www.drangon.org/mingw/

The IDE supports all versions (6.3 to 7.5 / upcoming 7.6 has not yet 
been tested).
But at least the 32 bit versions 7.3 and up have issues that can lead to 
gdb loosing the debug session)