Philosophers: Dining Philosophers Problem

Overview

The Philosophers project is an implementation of the classic Dining Philosophers Problem using threading and mutexes in C. The project simulates a group of philosophers sitting at a table with a bowl of spaghetti and a limited number of forks. Philosophers alternate between eating, thinking, and sleeping, ensuring no data races or deadlocks occur. 🍝🧵🕰️

Features

• Multi-threaded simulation of philosophers' behavior.
• Mutex-based synchronization to manage shared resources (forks).
• Handles starvation prevention and ensures philosophers do not die unnecessarily.
• Optional bonus implementation using processes and semaphores.

Program Details

• Program Name: philo
• Arguments:

  ./philo number_of_philosophers time_to_die time_to_eat time_to_sleep [number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat]
  

  • number_of_philosophers: Number of philosophers and forks.
  • time_to_die: Maximum time (ms) a philosopher can go without eating before dying.
  • time_to_eat: Time (ms) a philosopher spends eating.
  • time_to_sleep: Time (ms) a philosopher spends sleeping.
  • number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat (optional): Ends the simulation once all philosophers have eaten the specified times. 🍽️🕒🛌

Logs

All actions of philosophers are logged in the following format:

[timestamp_in_ms] [philosopher_id] [action]

• Actions:
  • has taken a fork
  • is eating
  • is sleeping
  • is thinking
  • died

📜⏱️👨‍💻

Requirements

• Written in C.
• Adheres to the 42 Norm.
• No memory leaks or unexpected crashes.
• No race conditions or deadlocks.

Running the Program

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/MohammadHusssein/42-philosophers.git
   cd 42-philosophers/philo

2. Compile the program:

   make

3. Run the simulation:

   ./philo 5 800 200 200

   This command simulates 5 philosophers with the following parameters:
   • time_to_die = 800 ms
   • time_to_eat = 200 ms
   • time_to_sleep = 200 ms

👨‍🍳⏳💡

Testing

Here are some general test cases to use: Philo tests

I encourage to come up with your own test cases and try to find any case that your program fails at. 🧪🖥️✅

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the code as long as proper attribution is given. 📜🔓✨

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