race condition

race condition (plural race conditions)

1. (electronics, computing) 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.

   • 2004, W. Richard Stevens, Bill Fenner, Andrew M. Rudoff, UNIX Network Programming: The sockets networking API, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 538:

     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.

• race hazard

• data race