Producer Consumer Problem: C Program, User Manual, and Essay

This assignment addresses the Producer Consumer Problem, a fundamental synchronization challenge in computer science. It provides a complete solution including a C program designed to simulate the producer-consumer scenario, avoiding the use of semaphores, and implementing a fixed-size buffer. The program includes a user manual detailing installation steps on Linux, compilation instructions using gcc, and execution steps. The documentation explains the program's logic, including the use of switch cases for buffer manipulation (add, view, and exit). An essay is included, providing a theoretical overview of the Producer Consumer Problem, its synchronization aspects, and the behavior of producers and consumers. The assignment also includes a bibliography of relevant research papers.

Running head: PRODUCER CONSUMER PROBLEM
PRODUCER CONSUMER PROBLEM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note
1

PRODUCER CONSUMER PROBLEM 1
Table of Contents
1) User manual:.......................................................................................................................2
Step 1: Install the build-essential packages:...........................................................................2
Step 2: Write the C program:.................................................................................................2
Step 3: Compile the C program with gcc:..............................................................................2
Step 4: Run the program:.......................................................................................................2
2) Documentation:...................................................................................................................2
3) Essay:..................................................................................................................................3
Bibliography:..............................................................................................................................5

2PRODUCER CONSUMER PROBLEM
1) User manual:
The Linux has been becoming the heaven of programming for the programmers as it
is a free and open source operating system. There are several steps to compile and run C
programming. The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Install the build-essential packages:
For installing the essential packages the following command will be required:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
Step 2: Write the C program:
The program can be written in the gedit as per following:
$ gedit producer_consumer.c
Step 3: Compile the C program with gcc:
For compiling the program the following command needs to be used.
$ gcc producer_consumer.c -o producer_consumer
Step 4: Run the program:
The last step is to run the program. For that following command needs to be used.
$ ./ producer_consumer
2) Documentation:
The program has been done in a way where the use of semaphore has been avoided.
The buffer size is declared as 5. Four switch cases has been used in the program, one is for
adding an item to the buffer, and one is for viewing the condition of the buffer. And the last

3PRODUCER CONSUMER PROBLEM
case is for exiting or terminating the programming. The output of the program is attached
below.
3) Essay:
The producer consumer problem is basically a synchronisation problem, a fixed size
buffer is there as well as the producer can produce an item then enter the item to the buffer.
On the other size, the consumer can remove an item from the buffer and consume the item. A
producer is not able to produce an item when the consumer is consuming items from the
buffer. The vice versa process is also not allowed. So, the things is, at a time, the buffer can
be accessed by the consumer or producer. A producer inserts an item to one of the empty slot
of the buffer and the consumer can try to remove and consume data from a slot of the buffer
that is filled by the producer. For compiling and executing a C program, there should be the
essential package, installed on the Linux system. When the installation process will be done,
the C program will be needed to do in the graphical text editor of Ubuntu. Then the program

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needs to be save with a name.c format. Here the program is saved as producer_consumer.c.
Then the program has been compiled and run. The output that has been got as a result, at first
the buffer will be empty, the user will choose the producer to produce items. In this program
the size of the buffer is 5. So, after producing 5 items the buffer will be full, a message will
come that the buffer is full. If there will be no items in the buffer and the consumer wants to
consume an item, a message will come that the buffer is empty. However, if items will be
existed there then the consumer will be able to remove an item from the buffer. The user can
terminate the program any time by choosing the 4th case from the program.

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Bibliography:
Davis, K., Gonzalez, D., Bentley, G. and Webster, M., 2018. Contrasting the Producer-
Consumer Problem and Expert Systems. Software engineering and CS Journal, 6(1).
Gao, C., Zhu, J. and Zhang, L., 2018, June. Design of Monitoring System Based on
LabVIEW Producer/Consumer Model. In 2018 3rd International Conference on Electrical,
Automation and Mechanical Engineering (EAME 2018). Atlantis Press.
Graham, E., Brown, R. and Hudson, D., 2018. Visualizing Superpages and the Producer-
Consumer Problem Using GothRush. International Journal of Software Systems Research
and Methodology, 2(1).
Martin, S., Miller, B., Breunig, E. and Hall, T., 2019. Comparing the Producer-Consumer
Problem and Erasure Coding Using Patacoon. International Journal of Software Systems
Research and Methodology, 1(1).
Patel, J. and Alvarez, M., 2019. Decoupling Extreme Programming from Version Control
Systems in the Producer. Computer Science and Information Technology Journal, 4(1).
Shanmugapriya, K. and Geetha, C., 2018. DECONSTRUCTING THE PRODUCER-
CONSUMER PROBLEM. International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 119(12),
pp.9203-9211.