race condition
noun1
Business, Computing, Electrical engineering, Electricity, Electromagnetism, Electronics, Energy, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Physics, Sciences A flaw in a system or process whereby the output or result is unexpectedly and critically dependent on the sequence or timing of other events.
- A race condition in writing my guest book file meant that the last person to sign wiped out all previous signatures.
- A race condition is usually when multiple processes are accessing data that is shared among them, but the correct outcome depends on the execution order of the processes.2004, W. Richard Stevens, Bill Fenner, Andrew M. Rudoff, UNIX Network Programming: The sockets networking API, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 538:
- Synonyms
- race hazard
- Related terms
- data race