Simple Deadlock Examples

user_103532 0
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I would like to explain threading deadlocks to newbies. I have seen many examples for deadlocks in the past, some using code and some using illustrations (like the famous 4 cars). There are also classic easily-deadlocked problems like The Dining Philosophers, but these may be too complex for a real newbie to fully grasp.

I'm looking for the simplest code example to illustrate what deadlocks are. The example should:

  1. Relate to a "real" programming scenario that makes some sense
  2. Be very short, simple and straight forward

What do you recommend?

deadlock language-agnostic multithreading
28 Answers

A sneaky way to deadlock with just a single thread is to try to lock the same (non-recursive) mutex twice. This might not be the simple example you were looking for, but sure enough I encountered such cases already.

#include <mutex>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  std::mutex m;
  m.lock();
  m.lock();
  std::cout << "Expect never to get here because of a deadlock!";
}
user_17766790

Here is my detailed example for deadlock, after spending lots of time. Hope it helps :)

package deadlock;

public class DeadlockApp {

    String s1 = "hello";
    String s2 = "world";

    Thread th1 = new Thread() {
        public void run() {
            System.out.println("Thread th1 has started");
            synchronized (s1) { //A lock is created internally (holds access of s1), lock will be released or unlocked for s1, only when it exits the block Line #23
                System.out.println("Executing first synchronized block of th1!");
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(1000);
                } catch(InterruptedException ex) {
                    System.out.println("Exception is caught in th1");
                }
                System.out.println("Waiting for the lock to be released from parrallel thread th1");
                synchronized (s2) { //As another has runned parallely Line #32, lock has been created for s2
                    System.out.println(s1 + s2);
                }

            }
            System.out.println("Thread th1 has executed");
        }
    };


    Thread th2 = new Thread() {
        public void run() {
            System.out.println("Thread th2 has started");
            synchronized (s2) { //A lock is created internally (holds access of s2), lock will be released or unlocked for s2, only when it exits the block Line #44
                System.out.println("Executing first synchronized block of th2!");
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(1000);
                } catch(InterruptedException ex) {
                    System.out.println("Exception is caught in th2");
                }
                System.out.println("Waiting for the lock to be released from parrallel thread th2");
                synchronized (s1) { //As another has runned parallely Line #11, lock has been created for s1
                    System.out.println(s1 + s2);
                }

            }
            System.out.println("Thread th2 has executed");
        }
    };

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        DeadlockApp deadLock = new DeadlockApp();
        deadLock.th1.start();
        deadLock.th2.start();
        //Line #51 and #52 runs parallely on executing the program, a lock is created inside synchronized method
        //A lock is nothing but, something like a blocker or wall, which holds access of the variable from being used by others.
        //Locked object is accessible, only when it is unlocked (i.e exiting  the synchronized block)
        //Lock cannot be created for primitive types (ex: int, float, double)
        //Dont forget to add thread.sleep(time) because if not added, then object access will not be at same time for both threads to create Deadlock (not actual runtime with lots of threads) 
        //This is a simple program, so we added sleep90 to create Deadlock, it will execute successfully, if it is removed. 
    }

    //Happy coding -- Parthasarathy S
}
user_87061570
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