Consider the following gdb commands that output the same text string.
(gdb) print foo
(gdb) python print(gdb.lookup_symbol('foo'))
In this case gdb.lookup_symbol() returns a gdb.Value() instance as expected, and the stringification of it is equivalent to the default gdb stringification.
But now consider the following equivalent case:
(gdb) print *&foo
The *& is a noop, but trying to use gdb.lookup_symbol('*&foo') does not work. So my question is whether it is possible to make use of gdb's command line dereferencing parser from python, and then get a gdb.Value in return?
trying to use gdb.lookup_symbol('*&foo') does not work.
That's because there is no symbol named *&foo in the binary.
whether it is possible to make use of gdb's command line dereferencing parser from python, and then get a gdb.Value in return?
Your question is not very clear, but I think you are asking for parse_and_eval:
Function: gdb.parse_and_eval (expression)
Parse expression, which must be a string, as an expression in the current language,
evaluate it, and return the result as a gdb.Value.
This function can be useful when implementing a new command (see Commands In Python),
as it provides a way to parse the command’s argument as an expression.
It is also useful simply to compute values, for example, it is the only way to get
the value of a convenience variable (see Convenience Vars) as a gdb.Value.