May 15, 2003

DEADBEEF

/ded·beef/ n.

The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory under a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000. Some modern debugging tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a way of converting heisenbugs into Bohr bugs. As in Your program is DEADBEEF (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD. See also the anecdote under fool and dead beef attack.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:51 AM

Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?