Common Causes of C/C++ Core Dumps and Case Analyses

Introduction – Building on a previous article about core dump analysis, this piece presents several common categories of issues that cause C/C++ programs to crash and generate core dumps.

1. Unreasonable Program Design

Design flaws like memory leaks leading to OOM, incorrect handling of signed/unsigned types, improper casting of pthread_t , infinite loops, and poorly designed initialization/cleanup logic can all trigger core dumps. Each sub‑issue is illustrated with a concrete code example (shown as images in the original).

2. System Library Misuse

Incorrect use of standard library functions can also cause crashes: custom comparator functions for sort must return false for equal elements; printf should use a format string (e.g., printf("%s", str) ) to avoid format‑string vulnerabilities; unsafe string functions like strcpy can overflow buffers, and iterator invalidation when modifying containers during iteration (e.g., deleting elements from a vector ) leads to undefined behavior. Additionally, the select system call on Linux cannot handle file descriptors greater than 1023.

Conclusion – The article summarizes the collected cases, offers recommendations for safer C/C++ development, and promises future analyses of other problem types.