core

Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still used in the Unix community and by old-time hackers or those who would sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite current; in core, for example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core dump} and the core image or core file produced by one are terms in favor. Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer {store}.

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