Darren New wrote:

> There are officially five ways to prevent deadlocks. Let's see if I can 
> remember them from memory:
> 
> 1) Lock things in order, as you say.
> 2) Don't hold a lock while waiting for another lock.
>    I.e., immediately roll back if you can't immediately aquire a lock.
> 3) Aquire all locks you'll need before you start processing.
>    E.g., "run this job where there's a video tape reader, a CD burner,
>    and a DSP available."
> 4) Only lock one thing, obviously.
> 5) Hmmmm... It's taking me too long to remember. :-)
> 
> But yeah, there's a formal mathematical proof that you can avoid 
> deadlock in exactly five ways.

See, Darren knew.

(You see what I did there?)

Although... how is #4 different from #2?

Anyway, do you have a citable reference for this stuff? (I'm guessing 
Dijkstra, Knuth, or somebody must have written about this...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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