Argh: Timers get finalized when calling Thread is finalized!

Question

I'm hunting a bug in my application where a global static cash is not refreshed anymore after the first thread that using the cache (and therefore creating the cache and its refersh timer initially) is exiting.
Is there some JVM internal automatism that all timers that were created through (not by!) a thread will stop when this thread exits? Even though the timer was created within the singleton object that is held by a static field and therefore is always there?

Answer 1

I use 1.5.0_04 on Windows (Sun J2SDK).
Well, in my case it's not that simple, of course. I
don't see a static referecne in your code for the
object that creates the timer, That's true, but you will instead notice that the timer reference falls out of scope.
for example.
I also don't have any join() calls for my threads.I do only have that join so that the main thread will know when the timer has been created.
And perhaps your thread doesn't schedule the task,
but your main app. Check the code, both the main thread, and my own thread schedules one task each.
Other than that you should end
your application by waiting a while so that the
garbage collector get's a chance to gc your thread
(and call finalizers, perhaps). To see if your timer
still works.Both threads ends their execution, but the thread created by the timer still executes. This is a sample output.
First thread exits
Executing Task from first thread
Main thread exits
Executing Task from main thread
Executing Task from main thread
Executing Task from first thread
Executing Task from first thread
Executing Task from main thread
Executing Task from main thread
Executing Task from first thread
Executing Task from first threadWhere task from first only indicates that is is my own thread that posted the task (the same thread that created the timer). Task from main thread does only indicate that that task was created by the main thread.
/Kaj