1. Generic term for a program th
AT assists in debugging other programs by showing individual machine instructions in a readable symbolic form and letting the user change them. In this sense the term DDT is now archaic, having been widely displaced by "debugger" or names of individual programs like "
adb", "
sdb", "
dbx", or "
gdb". 2. Under
MIT' s fabled
ITS operATing system, DDT (running under the alias HACTRN) was also used as the
shell or top level command language used to execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific debuggers supported on early
DEC hardware. The
DEC PDP-10 Reference Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the document
ATion for DDT th
AT illumin
ATes the origin of the term: Historical footnote: DDT was developed
AT MIT for the
PDP-1 computer in 1961.
AT th
AT time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has propag
ATed throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbrevi
ATion. Confusion between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (C14-H9-Cl5) should be minimal since each
ATtacks a different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs. (The "tape" referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.) Sadly, this quot
ATion was removed from l
ATer editions of the handbook after the
suits took over and DEC became much more "businesslike". The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there' s more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original
TMRC lexicon, reports th
AT he named "DDT" after a similar tool on the
TX-0 computer, the direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built
AT MIT' s Lincoln Lab in 1957. The debugger on th
AT ground-breaking machine (the first transistorised computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT (FLexowriter Interrog
ATion Tape). [
Jargon File]
In addition suitable contents:
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