Conflictwhile

Conflictwhile is a term used in discussions of concurrent programming to describe a pattern in which the evaluation of a loop condition interacts with concurrent updates to a shared state, producing repeated iterations or conflicting outcomes. The term is not part of a formal specification and is used primarily in illustrative or theoretical contexts to highlight how poor synchronization can trap a program in a loop that cannot make progress.

It typically arises when several threads read a shared condition and then perform updates based on that read without atomic coordination. If the condition’s truth value can be flipped by another thread during the update, one or more iterations may re-enter or oscillate, creating inefficiency or livelock, where progress stalls even though threads are active.

Prevention strategies include using proper synchronization primitives (locks, mutexes), atomic operations and memory barriers, or redesigning the code with lock-free data structures. Re-checking the condition after acquiring a lock, or using transactional memory/backoff schemes, can also reduce the likelihood of conflictwhile.

See also: concurrency, race condition, livelock, mutual exclusion, atomic operation, backoff strategy, lock-free programming.