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secondary damage
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secondary damage /n./ When a fatal error occurs (esp. a
segfault) the immediate cause may be that a pointer has been
trashed due to a previous fandango on core. However, this
fandango may have been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no
amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred.
"The data structure was clobbered, but it was secondary
damage."
By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded
fandangoes on core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least
one case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling with
`adb' actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of
seventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished this
near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by his fellows.
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