What does it mean to dump an array?

Question

I am unfamiliar with this concept of dumping an array. Does it mean to remove all contents of an array? Also this concept of dumping. What does it imply?

Answer 1

The term "dump" in computing is an old one, going back at least to the 1970's and probably a lot further than that.

Classically, it meant to output the values of something in an uninterpreted form (e.g. octal or hexadecimal) that can then be used when diagnosing a problem. (So for example, I recall reading computer printouts with "register dumps" and "core dumps" to try to figure why my CDC 6400 programs had crashed ... when I was an undergraduate in 1970-something.)

Without seeing the context, it sounds like "array dumping" is the same idea; i.e. output / display the array contents to see what is in it, for diagnostic purposes.

References:

• Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_dump
• Whatis.com - http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/core-dump
• StackOverflow - https://stackoverflow.com/tags/coredump/info