What is the structure of a PDB file?

Question

I am trying to understand how a debugger uses PDB file. It would probably be a small file system in itself. Could someone help me understand the structure of the PDB file?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 16 '11 at 15:15

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According to this blog post, the actual file format is kept secret by MS. However, I recommend you read that post as it has a lot of useful information what a PDB file is and how it's used.

answered Jun 16 '11 at 15:15

keyboardP

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 12 '12 at 16:27

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According to MSDN, its impractical:

Because the format of the .pdb file generated by the postcompiler tools undergoes constant revision, exposing the format is impractical

A debugger would use the DIA SDK to access the data inside them, meaning you don't really need to know its structure.

answered Feb 12 '12 at 16:27

Necrolis

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You do need to know the structure when you're a compiler writer, who wants to emit a `pdb` file with your binary. – Ian Boyd Oct 24 '12 at 15:22

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 13 '12 at 14:32

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As a matter of fact, the format of PDB is not documented, but you can collect very detailed information about the content of PDB files programmatically using the appropriate interfaces See Sample

answered Feb 13 '12 at 14:32

mox

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What is the structure of a PDB file?

3 Answers3

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