Lists with Inconsistent Widths

The CLI lets you create lists containing more than one width specifier. While this can be very useful, it can be confusing. Consider the following:

{ p2 t7 g3.4 }

This list being defined is quite explicit: all of process 2, thread 7, and all processes in the same group as process 3, thread 4. However, how should the CLI use this set of processes, groups, and threads?

In most cases, the CLI does what you would expect it to do: a command iterates over the list and acts on each arena. If the CLI cannot interpret an inconsistent focus, it prints an error message.

There are commands that act differently. These commands use each arena's width to determine the number of threads on which it will act. This is exactly what the dgo command does. In contrast, the dwhere command creates a call graph for process-level arenas, and the dstep command runs all threads in the arena while stepping the thread of interest. It may wait for threads in multiple processes for group-level arenas.