Can you explain what is meant by a deadlock in a system?

Deadlock is a situation in a multithreaded or multiprocess system where two or more processes (or threads) wait for resources held by each other, and none of them can continue working.

Example: Process A has acquired resource 1 and is waiting for resource 2, while process B has acquired resource 2 and is waiting for resource 1. Both processes are blocked forever.

In Python programming, deadlock can occur when using threads and locks. To avoid deadlock, you should:

• Try to acquire locks in the same order.
• Use timeouts when waiting for locks.
• Minimize the number of resources acquired simultaneously.

import threading

lock1 = threading.Lock()
lock2 = threading.Lock()

# Possible deadlock

def thread1():
    with lock1:
        with lock2:
            print("Thread 1 acquired both locks")

def thread2():
    with lock2:
        with lock1:
            print("Thread 2 acquired both locks")

Here, both threads can get blocked if they acquire locks in different orders.