Exception handling in threads

Question

Hi all,
I'm trying to figure out an efficient way for my main process that creates a few threads to know if an exception occurred in any of them. The best solution I think of is using Callable to return any exceptions that occurred. I don't need the main process to know what the exception was exactly (logging will happen in the thread), just that the thread ended prematurely. Is there another way to test for this?
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Leon

Answer 1

how would this idea work in your case?
public interface ExceptionCallback {
  public void exception(Worker w);
public class Main implements ExceptionCallback {
  public static main(String[] args) {
    (new Main()).init();
  private void init() {
    (new Worker(this)).start();
  public void exception(Worker w) {
    Thread.State ts = w.getState();
     ... // deal with any problems
public class Worker extends Thread {
  ExceptionCallback main;
  Worker(ExceptionCallback ec) {
    main = ec;
  public void run() {
    try {
    } finally {
          main.exception(this);
}detecting if a thread exits abnormally sounds difficult. the only thing i have learned is that a thread can never die without invoking the "finally" block.
and, maybe it is best to have the thread inform the main method when it exits, rather than have the main method try and monitor each thread? that's what i tried to do in my code.