Technical analysis clarifies why condition variables experience spurious wakeups in Windows, indicating the universal requirement for predicate-checked while loops.
A condition variable's wait can return even when no notification has arrived (a spurious wakeup). This article explains, from the Windows implementation, why the specification allows that, and shows the correct way to wait — with a while loop and a predicate — in Win32, C++, and C#. Archived version of https://comcomponent.com/en/blog/windows-condition-variable-spurious-wakeup/, as published on 2026-08-30. The live article is maintained and may change after this date. First published 2026-08-22.
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Go Komura (2026) studied this question.
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