Jeff Sturm writes: > examining instance variables I think Tom found out that a leading `$' in a symbol name could confuse gdb in certain situation. I think there's a patch in order for gdb not to choke on it anymore, but we also decided that `$finit$' shouldn't be used anymore. I posted a patch recently to let gcj generate `finit$' and still recognize `$finit$' in legacy code. It's a runtime and compiler patch combination: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/java-discuss/2000-08/msg00031.html http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2000-08/msg00664.html I hope this helps. ./A