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:
“So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and universities, with access to the major book reviews, they were able to pose as the vanguard of American culture when they were so obsessed with the two Joes—McCarthy and Stalin—that they were to produce only two artists, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who left town.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“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)