SIGBUS That!

Another common problem with pointers, is attempts to access non-aligned pointers. For instance, on many architectures, accessing a "long" (4 bytes) number must be done using an address that divides by 4.

Attempting to access a pointer whose value is not properly aligned for its data type, will cause a BUS signal to be sent to the process.

The default handler for the BUS signal prints a "Bus error - code dumped" message, and emits a core file, much like the handler for the SEGV signal does.