Philosophers: I Never Thought Philosophy Would Be So Deadly

Summary

In this project, you will learn the basics of threading a process by implementing a simulation of philosophers at a dinner table. The project explores concepts such as thread creation and mutexes, presenting a unique challenge to manage resource sharing without deadlock.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Common Instructions
3. Overview

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Introduction

Philosophy (from Greek, philosophia, meaning "love of wisdom") involves exploring fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, and reasoning. This project illustrates a scenario in which philosophers engage in cycles of eating, thinking, and sleeping, demonstrating the need for synchronization and resource management.

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Common Instructions

• Language: This project is written in C.
• Norm Compliance: The code must adheres to a specified coding norms.
• Error Handling: The functions must not cause unexpected crashes (e.g., segmentation faults).
• Memory Management: All dynamically allocated memory must be freed appropriately—no memory leaks allowed.
• Makefile Requirements: A Makefile with the necessary compilation rules and flags.
• Testing: Created test programs for development;

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Overview

The simulation involves multiple philosophers sitting at a round table with a bowl of spaghetti. Each philosopher must eat, think, and sleep, managing access to shared resources (forks) carefully to avoid starvation.

Key Points:

• Philosophers cannot communicate or know when another philosopher is about to die.
• Each philosopher needs to eat to survive.
• The simulation ends when a philosopher dies of starvation.