Fandango On Core: [UNIX/C Hackers, From The Mexican Dance] N.

HomeFortune CookiesMiscellaneous Collections

:fandango on core: [UNIX/C hackers, from the Mexican dance] n.
In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a {core
dump}, or corrupts the `malloc(3)' {arena} in such a way as
to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have
`done a fandango on core'. On low-end personal machines without an
MMU, this can corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage.
Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may
be substituted. See {aliasing bug}, {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {memory leak}, {memory smash},
{overrun screw}, {core}.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary

Related: