Q: Why can't I set or display the values of some static variables in
my program?
A: This seems to be a limitation of the COFF debugging information
emitted by GCC by default: the debuggers cannot display or set the value
of an uninitialized static variables (those who are in the .bss
section of the program). A work-around is to initialize these
variables, which causes the linker to put them into the .data
section. Another solution is to use the stabs debugging support; latest
versions of GCC include this support, so upgrade and use
-gstabs+ instead of -g.