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What could be the possible reasons for segmentation fault?

Why is a segmentation fault called a segmentation fault?

  • I understand that a segfault is an access violation to memory that the CPU cannot physically address, but why is it called a "segmentation" fault.

  • Answer:

    Segmentation is a virtual memory management technique similar to paging.  Memory is divided into "segments" (which, unlike pages, can be different sizes).  Programs may be restricted to reading or writing memory within their own segments.  A miscalculated address might lead your program to read or write outside its allocated segment, triggering an interrupt.  (That's probably somewhat oversimplified, but it gets at the main point.)

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That is old terminology from the days when memory management was done through many variable length segments instead of the current fad of having just a few areas for code and stack and data.   In the old days a good compiler and run-time could put each array and object each in a hardware-protected segment so that buffer overflows were impossible.  Those were the days.

George Gonzalez

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