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Debugging Information ○｜Definition｜1st｜20261013192254-00-⌔
Debugging information - Wikipedia
Debugging information
Debugging information is information that describes a correspondence of elements in the source code, such as the names of variables and routines, to entities in the object code, which is found in an object file, such as a shared library or an executable. This kind of information allows a symbolic debugger to provide a debugging experience that corresponds more closely to the source code.
The debugging information may be compiled together with the module’s binary file, or distributed in a separate file, or simply discarded during the compilation and/or linking.
Because historically such information was associated with the symbol table (which originally was for the translation from exported identifier names to locations in the object file), they also commonly known as debug symbols’. However, most debug information today exists outside of the symbol table, making this largely a misnomer.
This information can be helpful while trying to investigate and fix a crashing application or any other fault.1 They are also used to provide a view of the program’s structure when reverse engineering.
Printed 2026-10-13.
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Link to original Footnotes
“Debugging with Symbols”. Windows Dev Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2020-01-11. Retrieved 2020-01-11. ↩
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