Abnormal end

An AbEnd (also abnormal end or abend) is an abnormal termination of software, or a program crash.

This usage derives from an error message from the IBM OS/360, IBM zOS operating systems. Usually capitalized, but may appear as "abend". The most common were ABEND 0C7 (Data exception) and ABEND 0CB (Division by zero).[1] Abends could be "soft" (allowing automatic recovery) or "hard" (terminating the activity).[2]

Errors or crashes on the Novell NetWare network operating system are usually called ABENDs. Communities of NetWare administrators sprung up around the Internet, such as abend.org.

The term is jocularly claimed to be derived from the German word "Abend" meaning "evening".[3]

See also

References
  • Binder, Robert V. (1985). Application Debugging: An MVS Abend Handbook for Cobol, Assembly, PL/I, and Fortran Programmers. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0130393487.
  1. List of ABEND codes on madisoncollege.edu
  2. Parziale, Lydia (2008). z/VM and Linux Operations for z/OS System Programmers. IBM Redbooks. ISBN 9780738431598. page 352
  3. "Abend" Archived September 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine on dictionary.die.net

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.


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