core dump

A core dump is 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. The name comes from the once-standard memory technology core memory. Core dumps are often used to diagnose or debug errors in computer programs.

On many operating systems, a fatal error in a program automatically triggers a core dump, and 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 is created.

static void sub(void)
{
     int *p = NULL;

     /* derefernce a null pointer, expect core dump. */
     printf("%d", *p);
}

Segmentation fault   【所谓的Segmentation Fault（段错误）就是指访问的内存超出了系统所给这个程序的内存空间】

在程序不寻常退出时，内核会在当前工作目录下生成一个core文件（是一个内存映像，同时加上调试信息）。使用gdb来查看core文件，可以指示出导致程序出错的代码所在文件和行数