Multi-Thread application and common data

Question

I try to make a multi-Thread application. All the Threads will update some common data.
How could I access the variable �VALUE� with the Thread in the following code:
public class Demo {
private static long VALUE;
public Demo(long SvId) {
VALUE = 0;
public static class makeThread extends Thread {
public void run() {
VALUE++;
public static long getVALUE() {
return VALUE;
The goal is to get the �VALUE� updated by the Thread with �getVALUE()�
Thanks for your reply
Benoit

Answer 1

That code is so wrong in so many ways......
I know you're just experimenting here, learning what can and can't be done with Threads, but bad habits start early, and get harder to kick as time goes on. I am going to give a little explanation here about what's wrong, and what's right.. If you're going to do anything serious though, please, read some books, and don't pick up bad habits.
Alright, The "answer" code. You don't use Thread.sleep() to wait for Threads to finish. That's just silly, use the join() method. It blocks until the threads execution is done. So if you have a whole bunch of threads in an array, and you want to start them up, and then do something once they finish. Do this.
for(int k=0; k<threads.length; k++) {
  threads[k].start();
for(int k=0; k<threads.length; k++) {
  threads[k].join();
System.out.println("All Threads Done");Now that's the simple problem. No tears there.
On to the java memory model. Here where the eye water starts flowing. The program you have written is not guarenteed to do what you expect it to do, that is, increment VALUE some amount of time and then print it out. The program is not "Thread Safe".
Problem 1) - Atomic Operations and Synchronization
Incrementing a 'long' is not an atomic operation via the JVM spec, icrementing an int is, so if you change the type of VALUE to an int you don't have to worry about corruption here. If a long is required, or any method with more then one operation that must complete without another thread entering. Then you must learn how to use the synchronized keyword.
Problem 2) - Visiblity
To get at this problem you have to understand low level computing terms. The variable VALUE will NOT be written out to main memory every time you increment it. It will be stored in the CPUs cache. If you have more then one CPU, and different CPUs get those threads you are starting up, one CPU won't know what the other is doing. You get memory overwrites, and nothing you expect. If you solve problem 1 by using a synchronized block, you also solve problem 2, because updating a variable under a lock will cause full visiblity of the change. However, there is another keyword in java.. "volatile".. A field modified with this keyword will always have it's changes visible.
This is a very short explaination, barely scratching the surface. I won't even go into performance issues here. If you want to know more. Here's the resources.
Doug Lea's book
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/
Doug Lea's Site
http://g.cs.oswego.edu
-Spinoza