How to get function's name from function's pointer in C? (GCC extensions)

In my previous post I described how to get function's name from function's pointer in C under Windows for debug purposes.

In GCC you may use backtrace_symbolos declared in <execinfo.h>. An example looks like:

#include <execinfo.h>

void *pfunc = ...; /* pointer to some function */

void *buffer[1] = {pfunc};

char **strings = backtrace_symbols(buffer, 1);

if (strings == NULL) {

  perror("backtrace_symbols");

} else {

  printf("%s\n", strings[0]);

  free(strings);

}

You have to link with -rdynamic flag. The output looks like:

./a.out(myfunc+0) [0x400987]

If function is static name is omitted.

I recommend to use the things like this for debugging only.

How to print stack trace in C / C++ (GCC)

While discovering and debugging a large project it may be quite useful to print a stack trace. In Java I could use something like
new Exception().printStackTrace()
for that purpose. (Yes, I know, it looks stupid and I prefer not to commit a code like that to CVS, but this dirty hack can still be quite useful while debugging).

Is their anyway to achieve the same goal in C / C++?

Of course there is no portable solution. But several platforms provide their extensions. I recently discovered that GCC provides functions backtrace() and backtrace_symbols() declared in <execinfo.h>. An example is available here: http://linux.die.net/man/3/backtrace_symbols. We need to link with -rdynamic option. The output contains the name of executable file, the name of function (if available) and looks like:

./a.out(myfunc3+0x1c) [0x400904]
./a.out [0x400985]
./a.out(myfunc+0x23) [0x4009aa]
./a.out(main+0x78) [0x400a24]
/lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x377281d974]
./a.out [0x400839]

Or, in case of C++, the output can be:

a.out(_Z7myfunc3v+0x1c) [0x4009b4]
a.out(__gxx_personality_v0+0x18d) [0x400a35]
a.out(_Z6myfunci+0x23) [0x400a5b]
a.out(_Z6myfunci+0x1c) [0x400a54]
a.out(main+0x76) [0x400ad4]
/lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x377281d974]
a.out(__gxx_personality_v0+0x41) [0x4008e9]

Note that static function name is omitted in case of C or replaced with some dummy name in case of C++.

I still miss the information like source file names and line numbers. But at least this could give an idea of what to debug next.

However, I still wouldn't commit a code like that to production.