Editing Sleeping barber problem (section)

{{Short description|Software concurrency problem}}
In [[computer science]], the '''sleeping barber problem''' is a classic [[inter-process communication]] and [[synchronization]] problem that illustrates the complexities that arise when there are multiple [[operating system]] [[Process (computing)|processes]].<ref>{{cite book |author1=John H. Reynolds |title=Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference |chapter=Linda arouses a Sleeping Barber |doi=10.1109/WSC.2002.1166471 |chapter-url=http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/cs498lvk/prog_models/linda/sleeping-barber.pdf |access-date=8 January 2022|publisher=IEEE |location=San Diego, CA|date=December 2002|volume=2 |pages=1804–1808 |isbn=0-7803-7614-5 |s2cid=62584541 }}</ref>

The problem was originally proposed in 1965 by computer science pioneer [[Edsger Dijkstra]],<ref name="little">{{cite book |author1=Allen B. Downey |title=The Little Book of Semaphores |date=2016 |publisher=Green Tea Press |page=121 |edition=2.2.1 |url=https://greenteapress.com/semaphores/LittleBookOfSemaphores.pdf |access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref> who used it to make the point that general semaphores are often superfluous.<ref name="ewd"/>