JargonFile/entries/fandango on core.txt

fandango on core

n. [Unix/C hackers, from the Iberian 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
(or Windows boxes, which have an MMU but use it incompetently), this can
corrupt the OS itself, causing massive lossage. Other frenetic dances, such
as the cha-cha or the watusi, may be substituted. See aliasing bug,
precedence lossage, smash the stack, memory leak, memory smash, overrun
screw, core.