dump (redirected from dumps)

dump

To print the contents of memory, disk or tape without any report formatting. See memory dump.

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dump¹

1. a place or area where waste materials are dumped

2. Slang chiefly US an act of defecation

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dump²

Obsolete a mournful song; lament

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dump [dəmp]

(computer science)

To copy the contents of all or part of a storage, usually from an internal storage device into an external storage device.

(electronics)

To withdraw all power from a system or component accidentally or intentionally.

(ordnance)

A temporary storage area, usually in the open, for bombs, ammunition, equipment, or supplies.

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(operating system)

dump - 1. An undigested and voluminous mass of information about a problem or the state of a system, especially one routed to the slowest available output device (compare core dump), and most especially one consisting of hexadecimal or octal runes describing the byte-by-byte state of memory, mass storage, or some file. In elder days, debugging was generally done by "groveling over" a dump (see grovel); increasing use of high-level languages and interactive debuggers has made such tedium uncommon, and the term "dump" now has a faintly archaic flavour. 2. A backup. This usage is typical only at large time-sharing installations. Unix manual page: dump(1).