Segmentation, Page Fault, and Access Violation
A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system).
Segmentation is a historic term for the approach to memory management nowadays known as paging (see e.g. Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code), but the term is still used in the context of "segmentation fault".
On Unix-like operating systems, a signal called SIGSEGV is sent to a process that accesses an invalid memory address. On Microsoft Windows, a process that accesses invalid memory receives the STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION exception.
Read more about this topic: Segmentation Fault
Famous quotes containing the words page, access and/or violation:
“When you’ve been blind as long as I have, you learn to see through your senses. I can’t explain it exactly, but you get a feeling about people when you meet them. You see a picture of them in your mind. Not just what they look like, but what they really are. You see them much more clearly than you do with your eyes. Maybe that’s why they say looks are deceptive.”
—George Bricker. Jean Yarbrough. Helen Page (Jane Adams)
“The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.”
—Steven Levy, U.S. writer. Hackers, ch. 2, “The Hacker Ethic,” pp. 27-33, Anchor Press, Doubleday (1984)
“There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)