Deadlock describes a situation where two or more threads are blocked forever, waiting for each other. Here's an example.Alphonse and Gaston are friends, and great believers in courtesy. A strict rule of courtesy is that when you bow to a friend, you must remain bowed until your friend has a chance to return the bow. Unfortunately, this rule does not account for the possibility that two friends might bow to each other at the same time. This example application,
, models this possibility:
Deadlock
Whenpublic class Deadlock { static class Friend { private final String name; public Friend(String name) { this.name = name; } public String getName() { return this.name; } public synchronized void bow(Friend bower) { System.out.format("%s: %s has bowed to me!%n", this.name, bower.getName()); bower.bowBack(this); } public synchronized void bowBack(Friend bower) { System.out.format("%s: %s has bowed back to me!%n", this.name, bower.getName()); } } public static void main(String[] args) { final Friend alphonse = new Friend("Alphonse"); final Friend gaston = new Friend("Gaston"); new Thread(new Runnable() { public void run() { alphonse.bow(gaston); } }).start(); new Thread(new Runnable() { public void run() { gaston.bow(alphonse); } }).start(); } }Deadlock
runs, it's extremely likely that both threads will block when they attempt to invokebowBack
. Neither block will ever end, because each thread is waiting for the other to exitbow
.