In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault ) or
access violation is a fault, or failure condition, raised by hardware with
memory protection, notifying an operating system (OS) the software has
attempted to access a restricted area of memory (a memory access violation).
On standard x86 computers, this is a form of general protection fault. The
operating system kernel will, in response, usually perform some corrective
action, generally passing the fault on to the offending process by sending the
process a signal.