rts/Printer.c

[Simon Marlow]

> > Is there a way to compile the RTS so that the names of data
> > constructors are retained?
>=20
> My memory from a long, long time ago is that we had a debugging mode
> which used libbfd to get symbol names and some GHC-demangling code to
> turn those back into names like the user typed in.

Yes, we still have that code, but it doesn't get much use - gdb can map
addresses back to symbol names.  I think I always intended to beef this
up using a proper hash table for the address->symbol mapping, but never
got around to it.

Alternatively, if you compile for profiling, then info tables contain
some extra information including the constructor name for contructors.

> > It looks like Printer.c has some hooks for printing data structures,
> > is it feasible to make a primitive that allows Haskell code to call
> > into this? I'm thinking in particular of calling something like
> > printClosure() from Haskell code.
>=20
> If it's a global symbol, you should be able to access it form the ffi.
>=20
> If you want to traverse data structures the way you can using the
> HugsInternals library, you might want to tweak the code a little to
> provide a similar semantics/ API.  Basically, all you have to do is
> take the C code and split it into handy bits.

This is a nice idea - we'll be happy to incorporate the changes.

Cheers,
	Simon