 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(April 2011) |
A dump analyzer is a programming tool which is used for understanding a machine readable core dump.
A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can be combined together to accomplish a task, much as one might use multiple hand tools to fix a physical object. The most basic tools are a source code editor and a compiler or interpreter, which are used ubiquitously and continuously. Other tools are used more or less depending on the language, development methodology, and individual engineer, and are often used for a discrete task, like a debugger or profiler. Tools may be discrete programs, executed separately – often from the command line – or may be parts of a single large program, called an integrated development environment (IDE). In many cases, particularly for simpler use, simple ad hoc techniques are used instead of a tool, such as print debugging instead of using a debugger, manual timing instead of a profiler, or tracking bugs in a text file or spreadsheet instead of a bug tracking system.
Machine-readable data, or computer-readable data, is data in a format that can be easily processed by a computer.
In computing, a core dump, crash dump, memory dump, or system dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise terminated abnormally. 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. A snapshot dump is a memory dump requested by the computer operator or by the running program, after which the program is able to continue. Core dumps are often used to assist in diagnosing and debugging errors in computer programs.
The GNU utils strings , file , [1] objdump , [2] readelf [3] and the powerful gdb can all be used to look inside core files.
In computer software, strings is a program in Unix-like operating systems that finds and prints text strings embedded in binary files such as executables. It can be used on object files and core dumps.
The file command is a standard program of Unix and Unix-like operating systems for recognizing the type of data contained in a computer file.
objdump is a command-line program for displaying various information about object files on Unix-like operating systems. For instance, it can be used as a disassembler to view an executable in assembly form. It is part of the GNU Binutils for fine-grained control over executables and other binary data. objdump uses the BFD library to read the contents of object files. Similar utilities are Borland TDUMP, Microsoft DUMPBIN and readelf.
Introspector is a core dump analyzer for a compiler. [4]
