Philosophers

A multithreaded simulation of the Dining Philosophers Problem in C, built as part of the 42 School curriculum. This project explores concurrency, synchronization, and deadlock prevention using threads and mutexes.

Features

• Simulates multiple philosophers sitting at a table
• Philosophers can think, eat, and sleep in cycles
• Uses mutexes to control access to forks
• Prevents deadlocks and starvation
• Time tracking for precise action simulation
• Command-line arguments for number of philosophers, times, and cycles

Tech Stack

• C – Core language
• POSIX Threads (pthread) – For multithreading
• Mutexes – For synchronization
• Makefile – Build and manage project

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Felipp3san/42-philosophers
cd 42-philosophers

2. Compile the project:

make

3. Run the executable with arguments:

./philo number_of_philosophers time_to_die time_to_eat time_to_sleep [number_of_times_each_philosopher_must_eat]

Example:

./philo 5 800 200 200 7

Usage

• Arguments:

  • number_of_philosophers – total philosophers at the table
  • time_to_die – max time (ms) before a philosopher dies without eating
  • 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) – how many times each philosopher must eat

• Observe philosopher actions: thinking, taking forks, eating, sleeping

• Program terminates when all philosophers have eaten enough or a philosopher dies

Compilation

• Build the executable:

make

• Remove object files:

make clean

• Remove all binaries and rebuild:

make re

Project Structure

.
├── include/           # Header files
├── src/               # Source files
└── build/             # Object files (created after compilation)

License

Educational project under 42 School academic policy.