Core Dump

In computing, a core dump, memory dump, or storage dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has terminated abnormally (crashed). In practice, other key pieces of program state are usually dumped at the same time, including the processor registers, which may include the program counter and stack pointer, memory management information, and other processor and operating system flags and information. Core dumps are often used to assist in diagnosing and debugging errors in computer programs.

The name comes from magnetic core memory, the principal form of random access memory from the 1950s to the 1970s. The name has remained long after magnetic core technology became obsolete.

On many operating systems, a fatal error in a program automatically triggers a core dump; by extension the phrase "to dump core" has come to mean, in many cases, any fatal error, regardless of whether a record of the program memory results.

The term "core dump", "memory dump", or just "dump" has become jargon to indicate any storing of a large amount of raw data for further examination.

Read more about Core Dump:  Background, Uses of Core Dumps

Famous quotes containing the words core and/or dump:

    In the core of God’s abysm,—
    Was a weed of self and schism;
    And ever the Daemonic Love
    Is the ancestor of wars,
    And the parent of remorse.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.
    Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)