Is singleton thread safe?

Question

hello all,
please help me by answering these questions?
singleton patterns calls for creation of a single class that can be shared between classes. since one class has been created
Can singletons be used in a multithreaded environment? is singleton thread safe?
Are threading problems a consequence of the pattern or programming language?
thank you very much,
Hiru

Answer 1

Hi,
Before explaining whether a singleton is thread safe
e i want to explaing what is thread safe here
When multiple threads execute a single instance of a
program and therefore share memory, multiple threads
could possibly be attempting to read and write to the
same place in memory.If we have a multithreaded
program, we will have multiple threads processing the
same instance.What happens when Thread-A examines
instance variable x? Notice how Thread-B has just
incremented instance variable x. The problem here is
Thread-A has written to the instance variable x and
is not expecting that value to change unless Thread-A
explicitly does so. Unfortunately Thread-B is
thinking the same thing regarding itself; the only
problem is they share the same variable.
First method to make a program threadsafe-: Avoidance
To ensure we have our own unique variable instance
for each thread, we simply move the declaration of
the variable from within the class to within the
method using it. We have now changed our variable
from an instance variable to a local variable. The
difference is that, for each call to the method, a
new variable is created; therefore, each thread has
its own variable. Before, when the variable was an
instance variable, the variable was shared for all
threads processing that class instance. The following
thread-safe code has a subtle, yet important,
difference.
second defense:Partial synchronization
Thread synchronization is an important technique to
know, but not one you want to throw at a solution
unless required. Anytime you synchronize blocks of
code, you introduce bottlenecks into your system.
When you synchronize a code block, you tell the JVM
that only one thread may be within this synchronized
block of code at a given moment. If we run a
multithreaded application and a thread runs into a
synchronized code block being executed by another
thread, the second thread must wait until the first
thread exits that block.
It is important to accurately identify which code
block truly needs to be synchronized and to
synchronize as little as possible. In our example, we
assume that making our instance variable a local
variable is not an option.
Third Defence:--Whole synchronization
Here u should implement an interface which make the
whole class a thread safe on or synchronized
Thre views are made by Phillip Bridgham, M.S., is a
technologist for Comtech Integrated Systems.I'm
inspired by this and posting the same hereWas there a point in all of that? The posted Singleton is thread-safe. Furthermore, some of that was misleading. A local variable is only duplicated if the method is synchronized, a premise I did not see established. Also, it is misleading to say that only one Thread can be in a synchronized block of code at any time because the same block may be using different monitors at runtime, in which case two threads could be in the same block of code at the same time.
private Object lock;
public void doSomething() {
    lock = new Object();
    synchronized(lock) {
        // Do something.
}It is not guaranteed that only one Thread can enter that synchronized block because every Thread that calls doSomething() will end up synchronizing on another monitor.
This is a trivial example and obviously something no competent developer would do, but it illustrates that the statement assumes premises that I have not seen established. It would be more accurate to say that only one Thread can enter a synchronized block so long as it uses the same monitor.
It's also not noted in the discussion of local variables vs instance variables that what he says only applies to primitives. When it comes to actual Objects, just because the variable holding the reference is unique to each Thread does not make use of it thread-safe if it points to an Object to which references are held elsewhere.