Question

Can somebody please explain with examples (of code) what is the difference between deadlock and livelock?

Answer 1

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock:

In concurrent computing, a deadlock is a state in which each member of a group of actions, is waiting for some other member to release a lock

A livelock is similar to a deadlock,
except that the states of the
processes involved in the livelock
constantly change with regard to one
another, none progressing. Livelock is
a special case of resource starvation;
the general definition only states
that a specific process is not
progressing.

A real-world example of
livelock occurs when two people meet
in a narrow corridor, and each tries
to be polite by moving aside to let
the other pass, but they end up
swaying from side to side without
making any progress because they both
repeatedly move the same way at the
same time.

Livelock is a risk with
some algorithms that detect and
recover from deadlock. If more than
one process takes action, the deadlock
detection algorithm can be repeatedly
triggered. This can be avoided by
ensuring that only one process (chosen
randomly or by priority) takes action.