https://github.com/msabr/philosophers_1337

The classic dining philosophers problem 🍽️ simulates concurrent philosophers competing for forks, illustrating synchronization techniques to prevent deadlocks, starvation, and race conditions.
https://github.com/msabr/philosophers_1337

1337cursus 1337school 42cursus 42projects 42school c multiprocessing multithreading mutex philosopher philosophers philosophers-42 philosophers-dinner-problem philosophers-problem philosophers42 prossesing semaphore semaphores treads

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The classic dining philosophers problem 🍽️ simulates concurrent philosophers competing for forks, illustrating synchronization techniques to prevent deadlocks, starvation, and race conditions.

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/msabr/philosophers_1337
• Owner: msabr
• Created: 2025-05-18T14:18:47.000Z (about 1 year ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2025-08-29T17:00:46.000Z (10 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-08-29T19:25:35.856Z (10 months ago)
• Topics: 1337cursus, 1337school, 42cursus, 42projects, 42school, c, multiprocessing, multithreading, mutex, philosopher, philosophers, philosophers-42, philosophers-dinner-problem, philosophers-problem, philosophers42, prossesing, semaphore, semaphores, treads
• Language: C
• Homepage:
• Size: 24.5 MB
• Stars: 0
• Watchers: 1
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

          
#  PHILOSOPHERS - 42 Network







Implementation of the **Dining Philosophers Problem**, a classic concurrency challenge, using **threads (mandatory)** and optionally **processes/semaphores (bonus)**.

---

## 📖 The Dining Philosophers Problem

The **Dining Philosophers Problem** is a classic concurrency challenge first formulated by **Edsger W. Dijkstra** in 1965. It models synchronization, resource sharing, and deadlock avoidance in concurrent systems.

---

### 🪑 Problem Setup

- A group of philosophers sit around a round table.

- There are as many forks as philosophers, one between each pair.

- Each philosopher can:

  - **Eat**, **sleep**, or **think**

  - To **eat**, a philosopher must pick up **two forks** (the one to their right and the one to their left).

- Forks are shared resources and can only be held by one philosopher at a time.

- Philosophers cannot eat unless they have both forks.

- Philosophers never do more than one action at a time.

---

### 🔄 The Challenge

Naive implementations lead to issues such as:

- 🛑 **Deadlock**: All philosophers pick up one fork and wait indefinitely for the other.

- 🧍 **Starvation**: Some philosophers may never get to eat.

- 💥 **Race Conditions**: Without proper synchronization, concurrent access corrupts shared data.

---

## ❓ Problem Statement

**How can multiple concurrent threads safely share resources (forks) without deadlocks, starvation, or data races — using only mutexes and thread primitives?**

The project simulates N philosophers sitting around a table. Each must:

- **Take two forks** (mutexes)

- **Eat** for a defined duration

- **Sleep**

- **Think**

- Repeat the cycle indefinitely

A monitor thread ensures no philosopher dies from starvation (exceeding `time_to_die` without eating).

---

## 🎯 Objective

Simulate a group of philosophers sitting around a table. Each must:

- 🥢 Take forks

- 🍝 Eat

- 😴 Sleep

- 💭 Think  

Without creating **deadlocks** or **data races**.