On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 14:04 +0000, Tim Franklin wrote: > Yes - traditionally it's 0xDEADBEEF, I guess Cisco felt the need to > distinguish between different sides of beef and so dropped an 'E' to add > an index number :) > > Seriously, it's an old coder utility / humour combo - if there's memory > that's you shouldn't be using, rather than leaving it full of random > values, you fill it with DEADBEEF. If the program crashes or gives wrong > answers, and you see DEADBEEF show up, you know it's a problem with > looking at the wrong area of memory rather than some other kind of logic > error.
Yup, the Jargon File entry backs this up. http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/d/DEADBEEF.html > Why DEADBEEF and not some other 'magic' number is up there with why you > find so many workstations of long-time coders with the MAC of their > Ethernet card re-programmed to be nn:nn:nn:C0:FF:FE... Maybe even with two Es in the end, like 00:0B:AD:C0:FF:EE, right? :-) Regards, Peter _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
