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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Crash

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/kræʃ/verbCore term

In software engineering, crash means: To stop working suddenly because of an error, so that the program closes or stops responding. Also a noun: 'a crash'.

In Turkish: çökmek, kapanmak

How it is used

Apps, servers and browsers crash. Teams look at 'crash reports', 'crash logs' and the 'crash rate'. It is also used with an object: 'This input crashes the parser.'

Example sentences

  1. The app crashes when you rotate the phone on the settings screen.

  2. After the update, the crash rate on Android dropped by half.

Common collocations

  • the app crashes
  • crash report
  • crash on startup
  • crash rate
  • cause a crash
  • bugA mistake in a program that makes it behave in a way nobody intended, such as showing wrong results, freezing or closing suddenly.
  • stack traceA report printed when an error happens, listing the chain of function calls that led to it, with file names and line numbers.
  • exceptionAn error event that interrupts the normal flow of a program. The code can catch and handle it, or it can make the program crash.
  • logA record of events, messages and errors that a program writes while it runs, used later to understand what happened. Also a verb: to log an error.
  • reproduceTo make a bug happen again on purpose by following the same steps, so that you can see it yourself and find its cause.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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