The debugger and debug information is available or present in all software components, however, not all users are aware of what the debug data consists of and how the data is stored.

If you work with debugging formats, are a C/C++ programmer with relevant experience on any UNIX platform and have basic knowledge of compilers and debuggers, or are in the process of choosing formats then this article is for you.

We cover extracting debugging information from two popular debugging formats, STAB and DWARF. We discuss the advantages of one format over the other. Additionally, we provide an example application to extract information from a binary in a DWARF format to assist in experimentation and understanding.