Cant return text from class

Question

Hi guys,
I'm hopeing someone out there can help me out with a problem that has been bothering me for the last few days. Basically I can not get my class to return any text at all by calling the appropriate function, yet if I do a system.out.println() from within the class its self the text will be outputed to the console without a problem.
Below is the threaded class I want to retrieve the text from:
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.util.*;
public class SockThread implements Runnable{
     private String chatter;
     public String chatText;
     private String charText;
     private Thread runner;
     private Socket socktest;
     private PrintStream out;
     private BufferedReader in;
     public SockThread() {
          if (runner == null) {
               runner = new Thread(this);
               runner.start();
     public void run() {
          try {
               this.connect();
          } catch (IOException ioe) {
     public void connect() throws java.io.IOException{
          String hostname = "efnet.xs4all.nl";
          int portnumber = 6669;
          this.socktest = new Socket(hostname, portnumber);
          this.out = new PrintStream(this.socktest.getOutputStream());
         this.in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(this.socktest.getInputStream()));
          this.out.print("user "+ "strangename" + " stranger irc : " + "Stranger");
          this.out.print("\n");
          this.out.print("nick " + "Shadwick");
          this.out.print("\n");
          Boolean eof = false;
               try {
                    while (!eof) {
                         this.charText = in.readLine();
                              if (this.charText == null){
                                   eof = true;
                                   socktest.close();
                              } else {
                                   this.chatText = charText;
          } catch (IOException ioe) {
               System.out.println("Its not working :( " + ioe);
     public void showStatus() {
          System.out.println(this.chatText);
}And here is my main class:
public class ChatConsole {
     public static void main(String[] arguments) {
          SockThread st = new SockThread();
          st.showStatus();
}No matter if i try accessing the text via the showStatus() function or directly access the chatText variable i get nothing. I'm pretty sure i'm missing something thats stopping me from getting the text but I just cant see it. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it.

Answer 1

As you are creating another thread with the SockThread class, it runs independently from the main thread. So the SockThread Thread has probably not gotten to the part where it initiates the chatText var by the time the main thread calls the showStatus() method.
To varify this, either do:
put System.out.println("TEST"); in the show status method. If this prints then the var just hasnt been initiated yet.
OR
Use Thread.Sleep(2000); in the main method to make is sleep for a while to give the SocketThread Thread a chance to initiate the var.