/philosophers

Dining philosophers problem solution

Primary LanguageC

Philosophers

About project:

  • One or more philosophers sit at a round table. There is a large bowl of spaghetti in the middle of the table.
  • The philosophers alternatively eat, think, or sleep. While they are eating, they are not thinking nor sleeping; while thinking, they are not eating nor sleeping; and, of course, while sleeping, they are not eating nor thinking.
  • There are also forks on the table. There are as many forks as philosophers.
  • Because serving and eating spaghetti with only one fork is very inconvenient, a philosopher takes their right and their left forks to eat, one in each hand.
  • When a philosopher has finished eating, they put their forks back on the table and start sleeping. Once awake, they start thinking again. The simulation stops when a philosopher dies of starvation.
  • Every philosopher needs to eat and should never starve.
  • Philosophers don’t speak with each other.
  • Philosophers don’t know if another philosopher is about to die.

The specific rules for general part are:

  • Each philosopher should be a thread.
  • There is one fork between each pair of philosophers. Therefore, if there are several philosophers, each philosopher has a fork on their left side and a fork on their right side. If there is only one philosopher, there should be only one fork on the table.
  • To prevent philosophers from duplicating forks, you should protect the forks state with a mutex for each of them.

The specific rules for the bonus part are:

  • All the forks are put in the middle of the table.
  • They have no states in memory but the number of available forks is represented by a semaphore.
  • Each philosopher should be a process. But the main process should not be a philosopher.

Running:

Program should take the following arguments:

  • number_of_philosophers time_to_die time_to_eat time_to_sleep [number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat]

Where:

  • number_of_philosophers: The number of philosophers and also the number of forks.
  • time_to_die (in milliseconds): If a philosopher didn’t start eating time_to_die milliseconds since the beginning of their last meal or the beginning of the simulation, they die.
  • time_to_eat (in milliseconds): The time it takes for a philosopher to eat. During that time, they will need to hold two forks.
  • time_to_sleep (in milliseconds): The time a philosopher will spend sleeping.
  • number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat (optional argument): If all philosophers have eaten at least number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat times, the simulation stops. If not specified, the simulation stops when a philosopher dies.

Example:

./philo 4 800 200 200 200

or

./philo 4 800 200 200 200 5