[techtalk] core file

[Samantha Jo Moore]

> Will someone please clue me in on the "core" files that show up in
> many of my directories.  What are they?  Where do they come from?

Core files are memory dumps from programs that crash.  These files are 
usually used further by a programer using a debugger to figure out
what went wrong with the program that failed.  If you are not a programer
then there's really not a whole lot of need for these files.  You can
safely remove them.  An easy command to do this is:

 find / -name core -exec rm {} \;

This does a find from the root directory for any files named core and
then executes a rm command for each one found.

It is interesting to understand why these files are named core.  The
name of the file "core", is a short for "core dump", or memory dump.
A long time ago, computer memory was made not of chips but out of a 
matrix of wires and a tiny magnetic "donuts" called cores.  Thus this 
was called "core memory".  The name "core" was used instead because 
it was easier to say.  Memory technology has evolved to where we call 
it SDRAM and other cryptic acronyms.  However, memory is still refered
to as "core". 

Samantha