livelock
/li:v'lok/, n.
A situation in which some critical stage of a task is unable to finish
because its clients perpetually create more work for it to do after
they have been serviced but before it can clear its queue. Differs
from {deadlock} in that the process is not blocked or waiting for
anything, but has a virtually infinite amount of work to do and can
never catch up.
livelock
<parallel> /li:v'lok/ When two or more processes continuously
change their state in response to changes in the other
process(es) without doing any useful work.
This is similar to {deadlock} in that no progress is made but
differs in that neither process is blocked or waiting for
anything.
A human example of livelock would be two people who meet
face-to-face in a corridor and each moves aside to let the
other pass, but they end up swaying from side to side without
making any progress because they always move the same way at
the same time.
[{Jargon File}]
(1998-07-05)