In computing, a fatal error or fatal exception error is an error that causes a program to abort and may therefore return the user to the operating system. When this happens, data that the program was processing may be lost. A fatal error is usually distinguished from a fatal system error (colloquially referred to by the error message it produces as a "blue screen of death"). A fatal error occurs typically in any of the following cases:
- An illegal instruction has been attempted
- Invalid data or code has been accessed
- An operation is not allowed in the current ring or CPU mode
- A program attempts to divide by zero. (Only for integers; with the IEEE floating point standard, this creates an infinity instead)
In some systems, such as Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, a fatal error causes the operating system to create a log entry or to save an image (core dump) of the process.
Famous quotes containing the words fatal and/or error:
“The novelist’s—any writer’s—object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, is fatal is when he does not know what he does mean: he has no point to sharpen.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won’t one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)