Dining philosophers revisited
Armando R. Gingras · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1990
In 1965 Dijkstra posed and solved the Dining Philosophers problem. Since then the problem has become a classic test case for concurrency mechnisms and an example often discussed in operating systems courses. Two theorems prove the correctness of seatings where all philosophers always prefer to pick up a fork with a particular hand first. This note shows the subtlety required to solve the problem by showing that a recently published solution is incorrect. A correct solution is provided.