why windbg command start with . or !

windbg, windows

Solution

There are different kinds of commands in WinDbg.

Regular commands, e.g. `kb` apply to the debugging session. E.g. show stack dump etc.

Meta commands are prefixed with a dot, e.g. `.load`. Meta commands apply to the debugger itself. E.g. load extensions, show help and so forth.

Extension commands are prefixed with an exclamation mark, e.g. `!analyze` and `!dumpheap` are defined in debugger extensions (DLLs that provide additional functionality).

Problem

Original source