A
thread is a thread of execution in a program. The Java
Virtual Machine allows an application to have multiple threads of
execution running concurrently.
Every thread has a priority. Threads with higher priority are
executed in preference to threads with lower priority. Each thread
may or may not also be marked as a daemon. When code running in
some thread creates a new Thread
object, the new
thread has its priority initially set equal to the priority of the
creating thread, and is a daemon thread if and only if the
creating thread is a daemon.
When a Java Virtual Machine starts up, there is usually a single
non-daemon thread (which typically calls the method named
main
of some designated class). The Java Virtual
Machine continues to execute threads until either of the following
occurs:
- The
exit
method of class Runtime
has been
called and the security manager has permitted the exit operation
to take place.
- All threads that are not daemon threads have died, either by
returning from the call to the
run
method or by
throwing an exception that propagates beyond the run
method.
There are two ways to create a new thread of execution. One is to
declare a class to be a subclass of Thread
. This
subclass should override the run
method of class
Thread
. An instance of the subclass can then be
allocated and started. For example, a thread that computes primes
larger than a stated value could be written as follows:
class PrimeThread extends Thread {
long minPrime;
PrimeThread(long minPrime) {
this.minPrime = minPrime;
}
public void run() {
// compute primes larger than minPrime
. . .
}
}
The following code would then create a thread and start it running:
PrimeThread p = new PrimeThread(143);
p.start();
The other way to create a thread is to declare a class that
implements the Runnable
interface. That class then
implements the run
method. An instance of the class can
then be allocated, passed as an argument when creating
Thread
, and started. The same example in this other
style looks like the following:
class PrimeRun implements Runnable {
long minPrime;
PrimeRun(long minPrime) {
this.minPrime = minPrime;
}
public void run() {
// compute primes larger than minPrime
. . .
}
}
The following code would then create a thread and start it running:
PrimeRun p = new PrimeRun(143);
new Thread(p).start();
Every thread has a name for identification purposes. More than
one thread may have the same name. If a name is not specified when
a thread is created, a new name is generated for it.
Unless otherwise noted, passing a
null argument to a constructor
or method in this class will cause a
NullPointerException to be
thrown.