Have you ever opened a core dump with gdb, tried to print a C++ std::vector element, and got the following?
(gdb) p v[0] You can't do that without a process to debug.
So after seeing this for years, my thoughts traveled along the path of, we could make a process out of the core dump.
No really, there used to be Unices with a program called undump that did just that. All you need to do is take the (say) ELF core dump file and generate an ELF executable file which loads the memory image saved in the core (that's actually the easier, portable part) and initializes registers to the right values (the harder, less portable part). I even wrote a limited version of undump for PowerPC once.
So we expended some effort on it at work.
And then I thought I'd just check a live C++ process (which I normally don't do, for various reasons). Let's print a vector element:
(gdb) p v[0] Could not find operator[]. (gdb) p v.at(0) Cannot evaluate function -- may be inlined.
Very funny, gdb. "You can't do that without a process to debug". Well, I guess you never did say that I could do that with a process to debug, now did you. Because, sure enough, I can't. Rolling on the floor, laughing. Ahem.
I suggest that we all ditch our evil C arrays and switch to slow-compiling, still-not-boundary-checked, still-not-working-in-debuggers-after-all-these-YEARS std::vector, std::array and any of the other zillion "improvements".
And gdb has these pretty printers which, if installed correctly (not easy with several gcc/STL versions around), can display std::vector – as in all of its 10000 elements, if that's how many elements it has. But they still don't let you print vec[0].member.vec2[5].member2. Sheesh!
P.S. undump could be useful for other things, say a nice sort of obfuscating scripting language compiler – Perl used to use undump for that AFAIK. And undump would in fact let you call functions in core dumps – if said functions could be, um, found by gdb. Still, ouch.
P.P.S. What gdb prints and when depends on things I do not comprehend. I failed to reproduce the reported behavior in full at home. I've seen it for years at work though.