2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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deadlock
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. 1. [techspeak] A situation wherein two or more processes are unable to
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proceed because each is waiting for one of the others to do something. A
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common example is a program communicating to a server, which may find itself
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waiting for output from the server before sending anything more to it, while
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the server is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling program
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before outputting anything. (It is reported that this particular flavor of
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deadlock is sometimes called a starvation deadlock , though the term
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starvation is more properly used for situations where a program can never
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run simply because it never gets high enough priority. Another common flavor
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is constipation , in which each process is trying to send stuff to the other
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but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything.) See deadly
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embrace. 2. Also used of deadlock-like interactions between humans, as when
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two people meet in a narrow corridor, and each tries to be polite by moving
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aside to let the other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side
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without making any progress because they always move the same way at the
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same time.
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