Why is GDB so slow when I type I try to print an invalid symbol?

When I execute in GDB:

p some_nonexistant_variable_name

GDB takes minutes (sometimes) to report that it can't find the the variable in scope.

Additionally when I type:

p some_variable_that_is_in_scope->toString()

it takes forever...sometimes. Not sure why.

I'm using U开发者_Go百科Buntu 10.04, running GDB through Emacs 23. Any ideas?

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I think a recent release of gdb (6.5?) had a bug with searching large symbol tables, and a more recent one (6.7?) fixes it. Check out this bug report and see if it's relevant.