One way to avoid deadlocks is for Philosopher 1 to wait before reaching for his chopstick. In terms of the code, he can be put to sleep for a specified amount of time (sleep_seconds) before reaching for his chopstick. If he sleeps long enough, then the program might finish without any actual deadlock. You can specify the number of seconds he sleeps as an argument to the executable. If you do not specify an argument, the philosopher does not sleep.
The following pseudo-code shows the logic for each philosopher:
while (there is still food on the table)
{
if (sleep argument is specified and I am philosopher #1)
{
sleep specified amount of time
}
grab right chopstick
grab left chopstick
eat some food
put down left chopstick
put down right chopstick
}
The following listing shows one run of the program in which Philosopher 1 waits 30 seconds before reaching for his chopstick. The program runs to completion and all five philosophers finish eating.
% a.out 30 Philosopher 0 is done thinking and now ready to eat. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 4 is done thinking and now ready to eat. Philosopher 4: got right chopstick 4 Philosopher 3 is done thinking and now ready to eat. Philosopher 3: got right chopstick 3 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 2 is done thinking and now ready to eat. Philosopher 2: got right chopstick 2 Philosopher 1 is done thinking and now ready to eat. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. ... Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0: got right chopstick 0 Philosopher 0: got left chopstick 1 Philosopher 0: eating. Philosopher 0 is done eating. Philosopher 4: got left chopstick 0 Philosopher 4: eating. Philosopher 4 is done eating. Philosopher 3: got left chopstick 4 Philosopher 3: eating. Philosopher 3 is done eating. Philosopher 2: got left chopstick 3 Philosopher 2: eating. Philosopher 2 is done eating. Philosopher 1: got right chopstick 1 Philosopher 1: got left chopstick 2 Philosopher 1: eating. Philosopher 1 is done eating. % Execution terminated normally
Try running the program several times and specifying different sleep arguments. What happens when Philosopher 1 waits only a short time before reaching for his chopstick? How about when he waits longer? Try specifying different sleep arguments to the executable a.out. Rerun the program with or without a sleep argument several times. Sometimes the program hangs, while it runs to completion at other times. Whether the program hangs or not depends on the scheduling of threads and the timings of requests for locks by the threads.