DDT86.CMD in Digital Research CP/M-86 for the IBM Personal Computer Version 1.0Dynamic Debugging Technique (DDT) is a series of debugger programs originally developed for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) hardware, initially known as DEC Debugging Tape because it was distributed on paper tape. The name is a pun on the insecticide DDT, which "kills bugs".
The first version of DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 computer in 1961. It was an adaptation of the early interactive, symbolic debugger FLIT (the "Flexowriter Interrogation Tape", itself a play on the name of a once-popular brand of insect spray[1][2]), developed for MIT's TX-0 computer in 1959.[3][4] Newer versions of DDT on newer platforms continued to use the acronym DDT, but the name "Dynamic Debugging Technique", introduced by 1965,[5] prevailed by the late 1960s.[6] Early versions of Digital Research's CP/M and CP/M-86 kept the name DDT (and DDT-86 and DDT-68K) for their debugger, reinterpreted as Dynamic Debugging Tool.[7][8] The CP/M DDT was later superseded by the Symbolic Instruction Debugger (SID,[9] ZSID, SID86,[10] and GEMSID) in DR DOS and GEM.[11][12]
In addition to its normal function as a debugger, DDT was also used as a top-level command shell for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) operating system; on some more recent ITS systems, "PWORD"—which implements a restricted subset of DDT's functionality—is run first and is overlaid with DDT as soon as the user logs in. DDT could run and debug up to eight processes (called "jobs" on ITS) at a time, such as several sessions of TECO, and DDT could be run recursively - that is, some or all of those jobs could themselves be DDTs (which could then run another eight jobs, and so on). These eight jobs were all given unique names, and the usual name for the original and top-most DDT was "HACTRN" ("hack-tran"). Guy L. Steele wrote a filk poem parody of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," entitled The HACTRN.[citation needed]
DEC-10/DEC-20 DDT
editDDT (Dynamic Debugging Technique), as implemented on the DECsystem-10 & DECSYSTEM-20[13] allowed references to symbols within the programming being debugged. This feature loaded symbols from the .EXE executable file; a special version named SDDT used symbols from the running monitor and allowed system programmers to "peek" inside.[13]
See also
edit- On-line Debugging Tool (ODT)
- Tracing Debugging Technique (TDT)
- DEBUG (DOS command)
- Comparison of computer shells
References
edit- ^ The Computer Pioneers [unfinished] (Video interview). Interviewed by Bell, Gordon. 1983-11-13. Event occurs at 20m 17s. Retrieved 2025-05-23.
Jack Dennis: But I spent a year or two with Tom Stockham, sharing an office with him in Building 26, and so we got together in a joint project, making an improved debugging facility for the TX-0. And together we came up with the name FLIT. And I don't know whether anybody around here is old enough—well, I'm sure John is laughs—to remember what Flit actually is. John A. McKensie: I'm wondering if there [indistinct] is still sold or not! Dennis: I don't think so, because I mentioned this acronym for the debugging tape, and no-one realises where the acronym actually came from. But there was a commercial for this stuff, since, in which ... the character says, 'Quick, Henry, the Flit!' Because there's a fly buzzing around, and it's supposed to be ... Flit is very powerful insecticide for getting rid of bugs. But in our uses it stood for 'Flexowriter Interrogation Tape', it uses this machine to find out what was going on in the bowels of a program.
- ^ Corliss, Richard (2004-03-02). "That Old Feeling: Seuss on First". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2026-05-23.
- ^ National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution (2018-11-29). "Interview with Robert Alan Saunders". National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
Saunders: ... While this was going on, Jack Dennis wrote a debugging program which was an elaboration of one that had also come from Lincoln Labs. ... I thought it could be considerably improved and did so. ... This was the immediate ancestor of the similar program which ran on the PDP-1 when that showed up. We did the over-the-weekend adaptation of the macro assembler, not mine, but Jack's original, because there wasn't room for mine. The PDP-1 only had half as much memory as the TX-0 at the time. That was the ancestor of DDT, the DEC Debugging Tape, which did the same thing.
- ^ McKensie, John A. (1974-10-01). TX-0 Computer History (Technical report). Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Laboratory of Electronics. p. 26. hdl:1721.1/4132. 627. Retrieved 2025-10-24.
A utility program, Flexowriter Interrogation Tape (Flit), for use as an aid in on-line debugging, was written by Prof. Thomas G. Stockham and Jack B. Dennis in 1959. This was done as a voluntary contribution since neither was on the TX-0 staff.
- ^ Purdue Conference on Instrumentation for High Energy Physics, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana. May 12–14, 1965. p. 233.
- ^ [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Dynamic+Debugging+Technique%2CDEC+Debugging+Tape&year_start=1950&year_end=1990&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=true Google nGrams chart comparing frequency of Dynamic Debugging Technique vs. DEC Debugging Tape]
- ^ Kildall, Gary Arlen (February 1978) [1976]. "A simple technique for static relocation of absolute machine code". Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia. 3 (2). People's Computer Company: 10–13 (66–69). ISBN 0-8104-5490-4. #22 ark:/13960/t8hf1g21p. Retrieved 2017-08-19. [1][2][3]. Originally presented at: Kildall, Gary Arlen (1977) [22–24 November 1976]. "A Simple Technique for Static Relocation of Absolute Machine Code". Written at Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, USA. In Titus, Harold A. (ed.). Conference Record: Tenth Annual Asilomar Conference on Circuits, Systems and Computers: Papers Presented November 22–24, 1976. Asilomar Hotel and Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California, USA: Western Periodicals Company. pp. 420–424. ISSN 1058-6393. Retrieved 2021-12-06. (609 pages)
- ^ CP/M Dynamic Debugging Tool (DDT). User's Guide (PDF). Digital Research. 1976. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-07-06. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
- ^ SID Users Guide (PDF). Digital Research. 1978. 595-2549. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-10-20. Retrieved 2020-02-06. (4+69 pages)
- ^ SID-86 User's Guide for CP/M-86 (2 ed.). Digital Research. August 1982 [March 1982]. SID86UG.WS4. Archived from the original on 2019-10-20. Retrieved 2020-02-06. [4] (NB. A retyped version of the manual by Emmanuel Roche with Q, SR, and Z commands added.)
- ^ Paul, Matthias R. (1997-05-24) [1991]. DRDOSTIP.TXT — Tips und Tricks für DR DOS 3.41 - 5.0 (in German) (47 ed.). Archived from the original on 2016-11-07. Retrieved 2016-11-07.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^ Paul, Matthias R. (2002-01-09). "SID86". Newsgroup: comp.os.cpm. Retrieved 2018-04-08.
[…] Since the DR-DOS 7.03 DEBUG is still based on the old SID86.EXE, I suggest to run DEBUG 1.51 and enter the extended help system with ?? from the debug prompt. This will give you eight screens full of syntax and feature help. Some of these features were also supported by older issues. […]
{{cite newsgroup}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) - ^ a b Bering, Douglas E. (1975) [1968, 1969, 1970]. "Intro". Reference Manual: DDT (Dynamic debugging technique) and TDT (Tracing debugging technique. National Technical Information Service]. DEC-10-UDDTA-A-D.
DDT (Dynamic debugging technique) and TDT (Tracing debugging technique) for PDP-11 systems
External links
edit- DDT Command List for a freeware version written in portable C
- ITS 1.5 Reference Manual -(Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 161A)
- ITS: Luser's Guide
- The Great Quux Poem Collection -(See especially the notes to the poem The HACTRN)
