Thread execution

Question

Hello,
I am misunderstanding why this finishes the thread before the program exits. I thought that the thread executes on its own branch then the main program continues, in which the main method finishes thus calling the threads to stop before java shuts down.
public class TestThread extends Thread {
  public void run() {
    for (int incr=0;incr<100000;incr++) {
      System.out.println("The value of incr is: "+incr);
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    TestThread thread1=new TestThread();
    thread1.start();
}Here the thread loop completes entirely.
public class TestThread extends Thread {
  public void run() {
    for (int incr=0;incr<900000;incr++) {
      System.out.println("The value of incr is: "+incr);
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    TestThread thread1=new TestThread();
    thread1.start();
    System.exit(0);
}Here the thread doesn't complete in its entirety. I thought that the two examples provides above were similiar. Why is the first example's main method waiting on the thread before shutdown?
Thanks for your help.
--Gregory                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Answer 1

Thank you for your responses. I'm just trying to understand. Second question, when I override public void start() { run(); } to the class I've extended. I did basically what the API says it does, call run(), but it doesn't seem to branch off as an independent thread. When should the start() method be ever overwritten?
public class TestThread extends Thread {
  public void run() {
    for (int incr=0;incr<10000;incr++) {
      System.out.println("The value of incr is: "+incr);
  public void start() {
    run();
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    TestThread testThread=new TestThread();
    testThread.setDaemon(true);
    testThread.start();
}Thank you again