Got Beef?
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I was marking a report by one of my first-year CS students - they were writing about a recursive algorithm which might in certain circumstances go really deep. One slip of the keyboard just jumped out at me: the dreaded "SteakOverflowError".
The imagination boggles...
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the student must have been really hungry while writing his code.
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SteakOverflow.... Too much source?
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Don't know about you, but I'm suffering from a serious steak underflow right now.
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My best guess is the standard "DEADBEEF" hex code designed to end / begin certain memory blocks.
From a fast google search (my memory isn't perfect .. ) :
DEADBEEF :
The hexadecimal word-fill pattern for freshly allocated memory under a number of IBM environments, including the RS/6000. Some modern debugging tools deliberately fill freed memory with this value as a way of converting heisenbugs into Bohr bugs. As in “Your program is DEADBEEF” (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD. See also the anecdote under fool and dead beef attack.
Your "SteakOverflowError" sounds like you're run into the freed memory and something is catching to prevent badness for occuring. Either case, it's good fun to read :)