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Can a single core processor still throw ConcurrentModificationException?

If I spawn 2 threads on a single core PC does it ever access for example an ArrayList in the same time so it will throw ConcurrentModificationException?
My gut tells me although there are 2 threads, they cannot achieve true parallelism because there is a single core and what it can do mostly is to jump from one thread to another but without executing an instruction such as arrayList.add(element) in the same time.

TL;DR: Yes
List<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("My string"));
Iterator<String> myIterator = myList.iterator();
myList.add("Another string");
myIterator.next();
Result:
Exception in thread "main" java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.checkForComodification(ArrayList.java:1042)
at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.next(ArrayList.java:996)
at com.ajax.YourClass.yourMethod(YourClass.java:134)
You shouldn’t modify the collection while iterating over it. In practice the ConcurrentModificationException usually comes (but is not guaranteed) when you call next() on an iterator after having added an element or removed one. And in practice it often happens when you add or remove an element from inside a loop iterating over the collection, as Carciganicate said in the comment.
Or as ernest_k put it so well in the comment:
"Concurrent" in ConcurrentModificationException is not really about
parallelism

Concurrency is not the same thing as parallel computing. Two activities (e.g., two threads) happen concurrently if both have been started before either one of them is finished. You don't need multiple CPUs for that to happen.
But also note what #ernest_k said in a comment: You don't even need to have more than one thread in order for your program to throw a ConcurrentModificationException. All you need to do is create an iterator for some collection, then modify the collection, and then try to continue using the iterator after you've done the modification. That is to say, you'll get the exception if you modify the collection concurrently with an iteration.

Understanding collections concurrency and Collections.synchronized*

I learned yesterday that I've been incorrectly using collections with concurrency for many, many years.
Whenever I create a collection that needs to be accessed by more than one thread I wrap it in one of the Collections.synchronized* methods. Then, whenever mutating the collection I also wrap it in a synchronized block (I don't know why I was doing this, I must have thought I read it somewhere).
However, after reading the API more closely, it seems you need the synchronized block when iterating the collection. From the API docs (for Map):
It is imperative that the user manually synchronize on the returned map when iterating over any of its collection views:
And here's a small example:
List<O> list = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<O>());
...
synchronized(list) {
for(O o: list) { ... }
}
So, given this, I have two questions:
Why is this even necessary? The only explanation I can think of is they're using a default iterator instead of a managed thread-safe iterator, but they could have created a thread-safe iterator and fixed this mess, right?
More importantly, what is this accomplishing? By putting the iteration in a synchronized block you are preventing multiple threads from iterating at the same time. But another thread could mutate the list while iterating so how does the synchronized block help there? Wouldn't mutating the list somewhere else screw with the iteration whether it's synchronized or not? What am I missing?
Thanks for the help!

Why is this even necessary? The only explanation I can think of is
they're using a default iterator instead of a managed thread-safe
iterator, but they could have created a thread-safe iterator and fixed
this mess, right?
Iterating works with one element at a time. For the Iterator to be thread-safe, they'd need to make a copy of the collection. Failing that, any changes to the underlying Collection would affect how you iterate with unpredictable or undefined results.
More importantly, what is this accomplishing? By putting the iteration
in a synchronized block you are preventing multiple threads from
iterating at the same time. But another thread could mutate the list
while iterating so how does the synchronized block help there?
Wouldn't mutating the list somewhere else screw with the iteration
whether it's synchronized or not? What am I missing?
The methods of the object returned by synchronizedList(List) work by synchronizing on the instance. So no other thread could be adding/removing from the same List while you are inside a synchronized block on the List.

The basic case
All of the methods of the object returned by Collections.synchronizedList() are synchronized to the list object itself. Whenever a method is called from one thread, every other thread calling any method of it is blocked until the first call finishes.
So far so good.
Iterare necesse est
But that doesn't stop another thread from modifying the collection when you're between calls to next() on its Iterator. And if that happens, your code will fail with a ConcurrentModificationException. But if you do the iteration in a synchronized block too, and you synchronize on the same object (i.e. the list), this will stop other threads from calling any mutator methods on the list, they have to wait until your iterating thread releases the monitor for the list object. The key is that the mutator methods are synchronized to the same object as your iterator block, this is what's stopping them.
We're not out of the woods yet...
Note though that while the above guarantees basic integrity, it doesn't guarantee correct behaviour at all times. You might have other parts of your code that make assumptions which don't hold up in a multi-threaded environment:
List<Object> list = Collections.synchronizedList( ... );
...
if (!list.contains( "foo" )) {
// there's nothing stopping another thread from adding "foo" here itself, resulting in two copies existing in the list
list.add( "foo" );
}
...
synchronized( list ) { //this block guarantees that "foo" will only be added once
if (!list.contains( "foo" )) {
list.add( "foo" );
}
}
Thread-safe Iterator?
As for the question about a thread-safe iterator, there is indeed a list implementation with it, it's called CopyOnWriteArrayList. It is incredibly useful but as indicated in the API doc, it is limited to a handful of use cases only, specifically when your list is only modified very rarely but iterated over so frequently (and by so many threads) that synchronizing iterations would cause a serious bottle-neck. If you use it inappropriately, it can vastly degrade the performance of your application, as each and every modification of the list creates an entire new copy.

Synchronizing on the returned list is necessary, because internal operations synchronize on a mutex, and that mutex is this, i.e. the synchronized collection itself.
Here's some relevant code from Collections, constructors for SynchronizedCollection, the root of the synchronized collection hierarchy.
SynchronizedCollection(Collection<E> c) {
if (c==null)
throw new NullPointerException();
this.c = c;
mutex = this;
}
(There is another constructor that takes a mutex, used to initialize synchronized "view" collections from methods such as subList.)
If you synchronize on the synchronized list itself, then that does prevent another thread from mutating the list while you're iterating over it.
The imperative that you synchronize of the synchronized collection itself exists because if you synchronize on anything else, then what you have imagined could happen - another thread mutating the collection while you're iterating over it, because the objects locked are different.

Sotirios Delimanolis answered your second question "What is this accomplishing?" effectively. I wanted to amplify his answer to your first question:
Why is this even necessary? The only explanation I can think of is they're using a default iterator instead of a managed thread-safe iterator, but they could have created a thread-safe iterator and fixed this mess, right?
There are several ways to approach making a "thread-safe" iterator. As is typical with software systems, there are multiple possibilities, and they offer different tradeoffs in terms of performance (liveness) and consistency. Off the top of my head I see three possibilities.
1. Lockout + Fail-fast
This is what's suggested by the API docs. If you lock the synchronized wrapper object while iterating it (and the rest of the code in the system written correctly, so that mutation method calls also all go through the synchronized wrapper object), the iteration is guaranteed to see a consistent view of the contents of the collection. Each element will be traversed exactly once. The downside, of course, is that other threads are prevented from modifying or even reading the collection while it's being iterated.
A variation of this would use a reader-writer lock to allow reads but not writes during iteration. However, the iteration itself can mutate the collection, so this would spoil consistency for readers. You'd have to write your own wrapper to do this.
The fail-fast comes into play if the lock isn't taken around the iteration and somebody else modifies the collection, or if the lock is taken and somebody violates the locking policy. In this case if the iteration detects that the collection has been mutated out from under it, it throws ConcurrentModificationException.
2. Copy-on-write
This is the strategy employed by CopyOnWriteArrayList among others. An iterator on such a collection does not require locking, it will always show consistent results during iterator, and it will never throw ConcurrentModificationException. However, writes will always copy the entire array, which can be expensive. Perhaps more importantly, the notion of consistency is altered. The contents of the collection might have changed while you were iterating it -- more precisely, while you were iterating a snapshot of its state some time in the past -- so any decisions you might make now are potentially out of date.
3. Weakly Consistent
This strategy is employed by ConcurrentLinkedDeque and similar collections. The specification contains the definition of weakly consistent. This approach also doesn't require any locking, and iteration will never throw ConcurrentModificationException. But the consistency properties are extremely weak. For example, you might attempt to copy the contents of a ConcurrentLinkedDeque by iterating over it and adding each element encountered to a newly created List. But other threads might be modifying the deque while you're iterating it. In particular, if a thread removes an element "behind" where you've already iterated, and then adds an element "ahead" of where you're iterating, the iteration will probably observe both the removed element and the added element. The copy will thus have a "snapshot" that never actually existed at any point in time. Ya gotta admit that's a pretty weak notion of consistency.
The bottom line is that there's no simple notion of making an iterator thread safe that would "fix this mess". There are several different ways -- possibly more than I've explained here -- and they all involve differing tradeoffs. It's unlikely that any one policy will "do the right thing" in all circumstances for all programs.

Reason for ConcurrentModificationException on ArrayLists iterator.next()

I have no idea why a ConcurrentModificationException occurs when i iterate over an ArrayList. The ArrayList is methode scoped, so it should not be visible by other threads which execute the same code. At least if i understodd multi threading and variable scopes correctly.
Caused by: java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.util.AbstractList$SimpleListIterator.next(AbstractList.java:64)
at com....StrategyHandler.applyStrategy(StrategyHandler.java:184)
private List<Order> applyStrategy(StorageObjectTree storageObjectTree) {
...
List<OrderHeader> finalList = new ArrayList<Order>();
for (StorageObject storageObject : storageObjectTree.getStorageObjects()) {
List<Order> currentOrders = strategy.process(storageObject);
...
if (currentOrders != null) {
Iterator<Order> iterator = currentOrders.iterator();
while (iterator.hasNext()) {
Order order = (Order) iterator.next(); // line 64
// read some values from order
}
finalList.addAll(currentOrders);
}
}
return finalList;
}
Can anybody give me an hint what could be the source of the problem?

If You have read the Java Doc for ConcurrentModifcationException :
It clearly states the condition in which it occurs:
This exception may be thrown by methods that have detected concurrent
modification of an object when such modification is not permissible.
For example, it is not generally permissible for one thread to modify
a Collection while another thread is iterating over it. In general,
the results of the iteration are undefined under these circumstances.
Some Iterator implementations (including those of all the general
purpose collection implementations provided by the JRE) may choose to
throw this exception if this behavior is detected. Iterators that do
this are known as fail-fast iterators, as they fail quickly and
cleanly, rather that risking arbitrary, non-deterministic behavior at
an undetermined time in the future.
Note that this exception does not always indicate that an object has
been concurrently modified by a different thread. If a single thread
issues a sequence of method invocations that violates the contract of
an object, the object may throw this exception. For example, if a
thread modifies a collection directly while it is iterating over the
collection with a fail-fast iterator, the iterator will throw this
exception.
Note that fail-fast behavior cannot be guaranteed as it is, generally
speaking, impossible to make any hard guarantees in the presence of
unsynchronized concurrent modification. Fail-fast operations throw
ConcurrentModificationException on a best-effort basis. Therefore, it
would be wrong to write a program that depended on this exception for
its correctness: ConcurrentModificationException should be used only
to detect bugs.
In your case as you said, you do not have multiple threads accessing this list. it might still be possible as per second paragraph above if your single thread that is reading from iterator might be trying to write to it as well.
Hope this helps.

This exception occurred when you changing/adding/removing values from your list and in the same time you are iterating it. And if you use many threads at the same time...
Try to surround your if by synchronized(currentOrders) { /* YOUR LAST CODE */ }.
I'm not sure of this but try it.

Depending on the implementation of strategy.process(..) it could be that this implementation has still a reference to the List it passed back as a result. If there are multiple Threads involved in this implementation it might be possible that the List is modified by one of these threads even after it is passed back as a result.
(If you know the "Future" pattern, you could perhaps imagine an implementation where a method immediately returns an empty List and adds the actual results later using another Thread)
You could try to create a new ArrayList "around" the result list and iterate over this copied list.

You might want to read this SO post. Basically switch and use CopyOnWriteArrayList if you can't see where the problem is coming from.

Wrapped implementation of a map

What's the point of wrapping the map with Collections.synchronizedCollection(map), if then you have to synchronize the code while iterating?
Collection<Type> c = Collections.synchronizedCollection(myCollection);
synchronized(c) {
for (Type e : c)
foo(e); }
After having wrapped it, should not be thread safe?

What's the point of wrapping the map with Collections.synchronizedCollection(map), if then you have to synchronize the code while iterating?
To make individual operations thread-safe. (Personally I think it's a bad idea in general, but that's a different matter. It's not pointless, just limited in usefulness.)
After having wrapped it, should not be thread safe?
For any individual operation, yes. But iteration involves many steps - and while each of those individual steps will be synchronized, the collection can be modified between steps, invalidating the iterator. Don't forget that your loop is expanded to something like:
for (Iterator<Type> iterator = c.iterator(); iterator.hasNext(); ) {
Type e = iterator.next();
...
}
If you need iteration to be thread-safe, you should use one of the collections in java.util.concurrent... while noting the caveats about what is and isn't guaranteed if the collection is modified during iteration.

After wrapping it, each individual method is thread safe, but iteration involves calling methods repeatedly (iterator, then next and hasNext on the returned Iterator) and there's no synchronization between those methods. This is why you need to synchronize your iteration.
You also need to use a synchronized collection (rather than just synchronizing around your iteration code) because otherwise the methods that add or remove items would not synchronize and therefore could make modifications while you were iterating even if you used a synchronized block.

Adding to #jonskeet's #jule's answers, you should consider using ConcurrentHashMap (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/ConcurrentHashMap.html) which does not require locking around iteration.

Iterator Concurrent Modifiction Exception

This code will throw Concurrent Modification Exception if the list is modified in doSomething(). Is it possible to avoid it by enclosing the code in some synchronized block?
List l = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList());
// normal iteration -- can throw ConcurrentModificationException
// may require external synchronization
for (Iterator i=list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {
doSomething(i.next());
}

if you are removing an item from the list, you can do it by calling iterator.remove() instead of list.remove(iterator.next())
if you are adding an item - well, create a copy of the iterated list and add it there
if the code snippet above is part of the same method, then you don't need a synchronized list or synchronized blocks - no other thread can access the local list.

You can modify a Collection while iterating over it if you do so through the Iterator interface. You can use Iterator.remove() to remove elements.

You cannot modify it while you are iterating over it. Synchronizing won't help here.
EDIT : I forgot iterator does have the remove method. So it is possible to remove.

I agree with others about Iterator and remove().
About synchronization, I wanted to add that synchronization is designed to control interactions between different threads.
It is typical for an object to have several methods synchronized, and that one would call another. So the language designers decided that the same thread would not be blocked by himself on a synchronized.
Also, thinking about it, it a thread is blocked waiting for himself, you have a magnificent starvation perspective! ;-)
So this answers one of your questions: it is not possible to avoid the problem by synchronizing your code.

Use CopyOnWriteArrayList instead of synchronized Array List

List l = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList());
synchronized(l) {
// normal iteration -- can throw ConcurrentModificationException
// may require external synchronization
for (Iterator i=list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {
doSomething(i.next());
}
}