in computing, a core dump (in unix parlance), memory dump, or system 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,oxford english dictionary, s.v. 'core' 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. however, in informal conversation between persons who know what a core dump is, saying "i did a core dump of ..." indicates that they expressed all of the information that they know about a particular issue. for instance, "management had me do a core dump of our software configuration process to the new interns." ==background== before the advent of disk operating systems and the ability to record large data file, core dumps were paper printouts of the contents of memory, typically arranged in columns of octal or hexadecimal numbers (a "hex dump"), sometimes accompanied by their interpretations as machine language instructions, text strings, or decimal or floating-point numbers (cf. disassembler). in more recent operating systems, a "core dump" is a file containing the memory image of a particular process, or the memory images of parts of the address space of that process, along with other information such as the values of processor registers. these files can be printed or viewed as text, or analysed with specialised tools such as objdump. modern core dump files and error messages typically use hexadecimal encoding, as decimal and octal representations are less convenient to the programmer. ==uses of core dumps== core dumps can serve as useful d
Computer_errors Debugging