Java Coding Problems

225. Deadlock (dining philosophers)

What is deadlock? A famous joke on the internet explains it as follows:

Interviewer: Explain to us deadlock and we'll hire you!

Me: Hire me and I'll explain it to you ...

A simple deadlock can be explained as an A thread holding the L lock and trying to acquire the P lock, and, at the same time, there is a B thread holding the P lock and trying to acquire the L lock. This kind of deadlock is known as circular wait. Java doesn't have a deadlock detection and resolving mechanism (as databases have), and so a deadlock can be very embarrassing for the application. A deadlock can completely or partially block the application, can cause serious performance penalties, weird behaviors, and so on. Typically, deadlocks ...