What does the term 'starvation' mean in the context of multithreading and how can it be avoided?

Starvation — a situation in multithreading where one or more threads constantly do not get access to necessary resources because other threads are constantly occupying these resources.

Causes:

• High priority of other threads.
• Unfair scheduling.

How to avoid:

• Use fair locks that guarantee order.
• Properly manage thread priorities.
• Avoid long critical sections.

For example, in Java, you can use ReentrantLock with the fairness parameter:

ReentrantLock lock = new ReentrantLock(true); // fair lock