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Concurrency
The SimpleThreads Example
The following example brings together some of the concepts of this
section.
SimpleThreads
consists of two threads. The first is the main thread that every Java
application has. The main thread creates a new thread from the
Runnable object,
MessageLoop, and waits for
it to finish. If the
MessageLoop thread takes too long to
finish, the main thread interrupts it.
The MessageLoop thread prints out a series of messages.
If interrupted before it has printed all its messages, the
MessageLoop thread prints a message and exits.
public class SimpleThreads {
//Display a message, preceded by the name of the current thread
static void threadMessage(String message) {
String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
System.out.format("%s: %s%n", threadName, message);
}
private static class MessageLoop implements Runnable {
public void run() {
String importantInfo[] = {
"Mares eat oats",
"Does eat oats",
"Little lambs eat ivy",
"A kid will eat ivy too"
};
try {
for (int i = 0; i < importantInfo.length; i++) {
//Pause for 4 seconds
Thread.sleep(4000);
//Print a message
threadMessage(importantInfo[i]);
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
threadMessage("I wasn't done!");
}
}
}
public static void main(String args[]) throws InterruptedException {
//Delay, in milliseconds before we interrupt MessageLoop
//thread (default one hour).
long patience = 1000 * 60 * 60;
//If command line argument present, gives patience in seconds.
if (args.length > 0) {
try {
patience = Long.parseLong(args[0]) * 1000;
} catch (NumberFormatException e) {
System.err.println("Argument must be an integer.");
System.exit(1);
}
}
threadMessage("Starting MessageLoop thread");
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
Thread t = new Thread(new MessageLoop());
t.start();
threadMessage("Waiting for MessageLoop thread to finish");
//loop until MessageLoop thread exits
while (t.isAlive()) {
threadMessage("Still waiting...");
//Wait maximum of 1 second for MessageLoop thread to
//finish.
t.join(1000);
if (((System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime) > patience) &&
t.isAlive()) {
threadMessage("Tired of waiting!");
t.interrupt();
//Shouldn't be long now -- wait indefinitely
t.join();
}
}
threadMessage("Finally!");
}
}
