< jargon , programming > (Unix/C, from the Mexican dance) In C , a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a core dump , or corrupts the malloc 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 operating system 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 .
[ Jargon File ]
(1994-12-16)