April 15, 2009

Taking an Electronic Dump

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Perhaps one of the most inelegant, vulgar terms in all of computerdom is dump.

A dump is, flatly, a memory transfer. The contents of memory are copied from one location to another, typically saved to disk, displayed on the screen, or printed. The reason is utterly nerdy: To examine the contents of memory for bugs or just to see how things are working.

There are four ways I’ve heard the term dump used when referring to a memory transfer:

  • Memory Dump
  • Core Dump
  • Screen Dump
  • Mind Dump

The memory dump is simply a transfer of the computer’s memory from a specific location to the screen, disk, or a printer. In fact, nothing really needs to be dumped; you can use various utilities, such as the debugging tools that come with most compilers, to view memory “live.”

A core dump is a special type of memory dump. What’s being dumped is the operating system’s image in memory. Core dumps are done to debug the operating system, but they also happen on certain fatal errors. The theory is that you can examine the core dump to determine what caused the error.

I recall seeing numerous core dumps when I first learned to program a Unix computer. In fact, core dumping was the common procedure for dealing with memory allocation errors and other major boo-boos in a program. That may seem extreme, but it was better than having the computer hang up or crash, which is what DOS did when I first learned to program.

The screen dump is a copy of all information on the screen, like a snapshot. Traditional screen dumps were printed: you’d press the Screen Dump key (or some key combination) and the printer would instantly spit out a copy of all the text on the screen. A screen dump could also mean saving a copy of the screen’s text to disk, which is how early DOS screen capture programs worked.

Even though the Print Screen button no longer does a screen dump to the printer on a PC, it does capture the screen in Windows. That’s a handy tool to have, and it’s still essentially a “screen dump,” just a memory transfer to the clipboard instead of the printer.

Finally, you’ve probably never heard of a mind dump. That’s a good thing. Mind dump was a term used by an old boss of mine. It was how he described his habit of going into a rambling diatribe. He would sit in my office and basically babble to me on some topic, on and on. From that vast amount of verbal data I was to cull the nuggets of his brilliance. So in a way, it was sort of like the typical memory dump, though it was his memory not the computer’s. Consider yourself fortunate that you’ve never lived through one of those!

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