Race Conditions

A race condition occurs when correctness depends on thread timing, typically in check-then-act or read-modify-write patterns where a gap between operations allows another thread to interleave.

A race condition produces wrong data while the program keeps running, while a deadlock freezes the program permanently with no progress.

A data race is a low-level JMM violation where threads access shared memory without happens-before ordering, while a race condition is a high-level logic bug where correctness depends on thread timing; both can exist independently.