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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Log

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/lɔːɡ/nounCore term

In software engineering, log means: A 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.

In Turkish: log kaydı, kayıt, günlük

How it is used

Usually plural: 'check the logs', 'the server logs'. As a verb you log an error or a warning. Log levels such as DEBUG, INFO, WARN and ERROR control how much detail is written.

Example sentences

  1. Check the logs around 14:05; that's when the payments started failing.

  2. We log every failed login attempt, but never the password.

Common collocations

  • check the logs
  • error log
  • log an error
  • log level
  • server logs
  • debugTo search for the cause of a problem in a program and remove it, often by running the code step by step and checking values.
  • stack traceA report printed when an error happens, listing the chain of function calls that led to it, with file names and line numbers.
  • crashTo stop working suddenly because of an error, so that the program closes or stops responding. Also a noun: 'a crash'.
  • 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.
  • root causeThe deepest, original reason a problem happened, as opposed to the symptoms that people noticed first.

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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