Editing Core dump (section)

== Background ==
The name comes from [[magnetic-core memory]],<ref>[[Oxford English Dictionary]], ''s.v.'' 'core'</ref><ref>{{Cite book |author=[[Brian Kernighan]] |title=UNIX: a history and a memoir |isbn=9781695978553}}</ref> the principal form of [[random-access memory]] from the 1950s to the 1970s. The name has remained long after magnetic-core technology became obsolete.

Earliest core dumps were paper printouts<ref>{{cite web|title=storage dump definition|url=http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/storage+dump|access-date=2013-04-03|archive-date=2013-05-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511073628/http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/storage+dump|url-status=live}}</ref>  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]]).

As memory sizes increased and post-mortem analysis utilities were developed, dumps were written to magnetic media like tape or disk.

Instead of only displaying the contents of the applicable memory, modern operating systems typically generate a file containing an image of the memory belonging to the crashed process, or the memory images of parts of the [[address space]] related to that process, along with other information such as the values of processor registers, program counter, system flags, and other information useful in determining the root cause of the crash. These files can be viewed as text, printed, or analysed with specialised tools such as elfdump on [[Unix]] and [[Unix-like]] systems, [[objdump]] and [[kdump (Linux)|kdump]] on [[Linux]], IPCS (Interactive Problem Control System) on IBM [[z/OS]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogers |first1=Paul |last2=Carey |first2=David |title=z/OS Diagnostic Data Collection and Analysis |date=August 2005 |publisher=IBM Corporation |isbn=0738493996 |pages=77–93 |url=http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247110.pdf |access-date=Jan 29, 2021 |archive-date=December 21, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181221071420/http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247110.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> DVF (Dump Viewing Facility) on IBM [[z/VM]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=IBM Corporation |title=z/VM and Linux Operations for z/OS System Programmers |date=October 2008 |page=24 |url=http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247603.pdf |access-date=Jan 25, 2022}}</ref> [[WinDbg]] on Microsoft Windows, [[Valgrind]], or other debuggers.

In some operating systems{{efn|E.g., [[z/OS]]}} an application or operator may request a snapshot of selected storage blocks, rather than all of the storage used by the application or operating system.