bread crumb

Noun

breadcrumb (plural breadcrumbs)

1. (in plural) A tiny piece of bread, either one that falls from bread as it is cut or eaten, or one made deliberately by crumbling bread.

   Synonyms:

   crumb

2. (in plural) A single link in a chain indicating the hierarchical location of a directory, web page or similar, used as a navigation aid.
   • Breadcrumbs usually look something like this: "Home > About Us > Staff" and are positioned near the top navigation. […] The words in the breadcrumbs are links to pages at higher levels of the website.2010, Mark Stephenson, Web-Empower Your Church
3. (in plural) A fragment of data that serves to log the actions taken by a program, used in debugging.
   • If you believe the system can merrily proceed despite an assertion failure, code the exception handler to log the error, leaving debugging breadcrumbs behind, and return.2004, Jack Ganssle, The Firmware Handbook, page 276
4. (figuratively, in plural) One in a series of clues leading to a person or place.
   • Before he died, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), the hermit-like, socially maladjusted tech genius who created The Oasis, hid an Easter egg somewhere in the circuitry, scattering bread crumbs that lead to its location. Find the egg, and the mogul’s fortune—along with total control of his digital...2018 March 26, A. A. Dowd, “Steven Spielberg Finds Fun, and maybe even a Soul, in the Pandering Pastiche of Ready Player One”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 31 May 2018

See all 7 meanings of breadcrumb