CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsdebuggingpdb-files
whossa
whossa

Reputation: 201

Why should we need the map file when pdb file is available in windows platform?

As described in title, I think the pdb file is a superset of map file. The reason why I ask this question is due to the fact that i'm now taking charge of sustaining a old system which will produce pdb and map file at the same time. I wonder if the map file is unnecessary while pdb file is available!

Thanks

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2273

Answers (1)

Marc Sherman
Marc Sherman

Reputation: 2363

I've also wondered about this and decided to see what John Robbins has to say in his book "Debugging Applications". He says that map files are "the only textual representation of your program's global symbols and source and line number information" and can be read without any supporting program. He goes on to say that Microsoft changes the symbol table format on a regular basis and if you have a customer running a very old version of your program, it may be hard to find an old version of the symbol engine that can interpret the symbol table in the PDB files for that very old program. But since a map file is just a text file, you would easily be able to map a crash address to a symbol by simply opening the map file in notepad!

Upvotes: 9

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