A crash dump works similar to a normal debugging does. It has break points, but once it is paused, it cannot be resumed - it is simply a dump, a frozen instance of the program's current state (rather, the state it was in when the dump happened).
Depending on the type of the dump, symbol files may be required. There are modules in Visual Studio that can load symbol files, so symbol files are readily compatible with Visual Studio.
Symbols are like placeholders (or mappings) of variable names and function names, linked to their memory address. Symbols are used during the linking part of compilation, so when a symbol problem occurs, the program should still compile and build... This might end up being harder to spot and fix for someone unfamiliar with symbols.
Symbols are placed in a table. This table is found within an Object file (.obj) within the current project.
PDB files (program database files) are linked to and only compatible with the version of Visual Studio that they were built against. They are a collection of symbol information which is stored to save time later.
PDB files are created whenever you build a solution, created by the compiler. These files allow for incremental updates.
These are both very useful debugging tools if used properly.
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