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Mutexes are used to prevent multiple threads from causing a data race by accessing the same shared resource at the same time. Sometimes, when locking mutexes, multiple threads hold each other's lock, and the program consequently deadlocks. Four conditions are required for deadlock to occur:

• Mutual mutual exclusion (at At least one nonshareable resource must be held.),
• Hold hold and wait (a A thread must hold a resource while awaiting availability of another resource.),
• No no preemption (resources Resources cannot be taken away from a thread while they are in-use.), and
• Circular circular wait (a A thread must await a resource held by another thread which is, in turn, awaiting a resource held by the first thread.).

Deadlock needs all four conditions, so preventing deadlock requires preventing any one of the four conditions. One simple solution is to lock the mutexes in a predefined order, which prevents circular wait.

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This compliant solution uses Standard Template Library facilities to ensure that deadlock does not occur due to circular wait conditions. The std::lock() function takes a variable number of lockable objects and attempts to lock them such that deadlock does not occur [ISO/IEC 14882-2014]. In typical implementations, this is done by using a combination of lock(), try_lock(), and unlock() to attempt to lock the object and backing off if the lock is not acquired, which may have worse performance than a solution that locks in predefined order explicitly.

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Deadlock prevents multiple threads from progressing, halting program execution. A denial-of-service attack is possible if the attacker can create the conditions for deadlock.

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