how can I get array values back from a thread - java

I have a thread, in Java, putting the first 100 Fibonacci numbers in an array. How do I get the numbers back from the thread. Is there an interrupt, handling, exception, implements, extends? I have been adding things and the trial and error is not getting me anywhere to understanding.
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.Thread; //don't know if this is needed
public class FibThread extends Thread{
public FibThread (){
super();
}
public void run(int inputNum){
System.out.println(inputNum);
long[] fibArray = new long[inputNum];
fibArray[0]=0;
fibArray[1]=1;
fibArray[2]=1;
for(int i = 3; i<inputNum; i++){
fibArray[i]= fibArray[i-1] + fibArray[i-2];
// }
//System.out.println( );
// for(int j = 0; j<= inputNum; j++){
int output = (int) fibArray[i];
System.out.println(output);
}
}
public static void main(String[] args){
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
FibThread threadOne;
int inputNum, itter, output;
System.out.println("Please enter the number of Fibonacci numbers to be generated: ");
itter = keyboard.nextInt();
//inputNum = itter;
threadOne = new FibThread();
threadOne.start();
// for(int j = 0; j<= inputNum; j++){
// int output = (int) fibArray[j];
// System.out.println(output);
}
}

If you have a "task" that returns a value, make it a Callable.
If you want the callable to run in a background thread, then instead of handling the creation and execution of threads yourself, it's generally better to abstract this through an ExecutorService. A caller can interact with the service by passing in a Callable, and getting back a Future that will be populated with the value when the calculation has completed.
To modify your example, renaming FibThread to FibCalc:
public class FibCalc implements Callable<Integer> {
// We need some way to pass in the initial input - must be through the
// constructor and we'll store it here
private final inputNum;
public FibCalc(int inputNum) {
this.inputNum = inputNum;
}
public int call() {
// The same as your run() method from before, except at the end:
...
return output;
}
}
// And now for your main() method
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
// As before up to:
...
itter = keyboard.nextInt();
// Create a very simple executor that just runs everything in a single separate thread
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
// Create the calculation to be run (passing the input through the constructor)
FibCalc calc = new FibCalc(itter);
// Send this to the executor service, which will start running it in a background thread
// while giving us back the Future that will hold the result
Future<Integer> fibResult = exec.submit(fibCalc);
// Get the result - this will block until it's available
int result = fibResult.get();
// Now we can do whatever we want with the result
System.out.println("We got: " + result);
}
If you absolutely have to create a Thread object yourself (due to artificial constraints on a homework question, or something like that - I can't see why one would realistically do this in reality), then the approach has to be different. You can't return a value because run() must return void due to the interface. So my approach here would be to store the result in a local variable of the FibThread class, and then add a method to that class (e.g. public int getResult()) which returned that variable.
(If you're doing it this way, bear in mind that you'll have to handle the concurrency issues (i.e. letting the caller know the result is ready) yourself. A naive approach, where the main method starts the thread and then immediately calls getResult(), means that it will almost certainly get an "empty" result before the calculation has finished. A crude solution to this problem would be calling join() on the spawned thread, to wait for it to finish before accessing the result.)

Related

Sharing variable between threads in JAVA

I have two threads doing calculation on a common variable "n", one thread increase "n" each time, another decrease "n" each time, when I am not using volatile keyword on this variable, something I cannot understand happens, sb there please help explain, the snippet is like follow:
public class TwoThreads {
private static int n = 0;
private static int called = 0;
public static void main(String[] args) {
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
n = 0;
called = 0;
TwoThreads two = new TwoThreads();
Inc inc = two.new Inc();
Dec dec = two.new Dec();
Thread t = new Thread(inc);
t.start();
t = new Thread(dec);
t.start();
while (called != 2) {
//System.out.println("----");
}
System.out.println(n);
}
}
private synchronized void inc() {
n++;
called++;
}
private synchronized void dec() {
n--;
called++;
}
class Inc implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
inc();
}
}
class Dec implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
dec();
}
}
}
1) What I am expecting is "n=0,called=2" after execution, but chances are the main thread can be blocked in the while loop;
2) But when I uncomment this line, the program when as expected:
//System.out.println("----");
3) I know I should use "volatile" on "called", but I cannot explain why the above happens;
4) "called" is "read and load" in working memory of specific thread, but why it's not "store and write" back into main thread after "long" while loop, if it's not, why a simple "print" line can make such a difference
You have synchronized writing of data (in inc and dec), but not reading of data (in main). BOTH should be synchronized to get predictable effects. Otherwise, chances are that main never "sees" the changes done by inc and dec.
You don't know where exactly called++ will be executed, your main thread will continue to born new threads which will make mutual exclusion, I mean only one thread can make called++ in each time because methods are synchronized, and you don't know each exactly thread will be it. May be two times will performed n++ or n--, you don't know this, may be ten times will performed n++ while main thread reach your condition.
and try to read about data race
while (called != 2) {
//System.out.println("----");
}
//.. place for data race, n can be changed
System.out.println(n);
You need to synchronize access to called here:
while (called != 2) {
//System.out.println("----");
}
I sugest to add getCalled method
private synchronized int getCalled() {
return called;
}
and replace called != 2 with getCalled() != 2
If you interested in why this problem occure you can read about visibility in context of java memory model.

Is this multi-threading code guaranteed to always return zero?

I am taking a book to do some mock test, I have found this question:
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
class AtomicVariableTest {
private static AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger(0);
static class Decrementer extends Thread {
public void run() {
counter.decrementAndGet(); // #1
}
}
static class Incrementer extends Thread {
public void run() {
counter.incrementAndGet(); // #2
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
new Incrementer().start();
new Decrementer().start();
}
System.out.println(counter);
}
}
The answer:
This program will always print 0.
But I think there is no guarantee that the threads will have completed when it prints the counter value.
I mean, most of the time it will return 0, but if you are strict with the theory there is no guarantee of this.
Am I correct?
There is guaranteed. And there is not guaranteed. There is no middle ground.
In this case there is no guarantee that the result is always zero. This is because the threads are not joined - and might never even have actually ran before the print!
For example, among other permutations, the sequence this code could have executed is:
counter.decrementAndGet(); // #1
System.out.println(counter); // Main thread
counter.incrementAndGet(); // #2
// (and so on, at some arbitrary point after the print)
Avoiding such undesired interleaving/execution is handled in Java (as per the JLS) under happens-before relationships.
If the threads were joined (to the thread with the print) then a happens-before would have been established - in this case that would mean that the threads started and finished running - and the result would be guarantee to be zero.
public static void main(String[] args) {
final List<Thread> threads = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
final new Incrementer i = new Incrementer();
threads.add(i);
i.start();
final new Decrementer d = new Decrementer();
threads.add(d);
d.start();
}
for (final Thread t : threads) { t.join(); }
System.out.println(counter);
}
See one of the many duplicates: Wait until child threads completed : Java
And this is why you use the ExecutorService or ExecutorCompletionService and never deal with thread management manually because it is extremely error prone otherwise.

Creating three threads in Java to compute three different items

I'm trying to write my solution to a problem of multithreading in Java:
Create three separate threads that will calculate the average, minimum
and maximum of a series of numbers that is passed to the program. The
values will be stored globally in the program. The three threads will
return the three values respectively to the main program where it will
be output to the user.
I'm new to Java, so I've got one basic question about the approach to this program: How do I create three separate threads that will perform three different functions? While reading multithreading, I've come across several examples wherein three(or more) threads were created which would each execute a single function: counting down a loop. Thus requires only a single call to public void run() and one can very easily create three instances of a class that implements Runnable to do this, something like:
// Create multiple threads.
class NewThread implements Runnable {
String name; // name of thread
Thread t;
NewThread(String threadname) {
name = threadname;
t = new Thread(this, name);
System.out.println("New thread: " + t);
t.start(); // Start the thread
}
// This is the entry point for thread.
public void run() {
try {
for(int i = 5; i > 0; i--) {
System.out.println(name + ": " + i);
Thread.sleep(1000);
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
System.out.println(name + "Interrupted");
}
System.out.println(name + " exiting.");
}
}
class MultiThreadDemo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
new NewThread("One"); // start threads
new NewThread("Two");
new NewThread("Three");
try {
// wait for other threads to end
Thread.sleep(10000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
System.out.println("Main thread Interrupted");
}
System.out.println("Main thread exiting.");
}
}
I am not sure how to create threads that perform separate functions: calculate double, min and max. So far, I've created one thread that calculates the average and returns it to the main program. This is my code [till now]:
package assignment2;
class Q2Thread implements Runnable {
String name;
Thread t;
private int average;
int sum=0;
Q2Thread(String name)
{
this.name=name;
t=new Thread(this, name);
//System.out.println("This thr");
t.start();
}
public void run()
{
try
{
for(int i=0;i<Q7Main.arr.length;i++)
sum+=Q7Main.arr[i];
average=sum/Q7Main.arr.length;
}
//catch(InterruptedException e)
finally
{
System.out.println("Calcuated average.");
}
System.out.println("Child Thread exiting.");
}
public int getAverage()
{
return average;
}
}
package assignment2;
import java.util.*;
public class Q7Main {
public static int[] arr=new int[5];
static Scanner in=new Scanner(System.in);
private static int finalAverage;
public static void main(String[] args) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
System.out.println("Please enter the numbers: " );
for(int i=0;i<arr.length; i++)
arr[i]=in.nextInt();
System.out.println("You entered the numbers: ");
for(int x: arr)
{
System.out.print(x+ " ");
}
System.out.println();
Q2Thread obj=new Q2Thread("Average");
try
{
obj.t.join();
}
catch(InterruptedException e)
{
System.out.println("Interrupted.");
}
finalAverage=obj.getAverage();
System.out.println("The average of the numbers is: "+ finalAverage);
}
}
I have two questions now:
Can someone give me the approach to creating two more threads that will compute the min and max?
Are there any OOP defects in my code(thus far) that I should be aware of?
What you can do is create two other classes that calculate min and max, create an object of each of them obj1 and obj2. Since the constructor starts the thread for you, you should now have 3 threads running asynchronously.
Call obj1.t.join() and obj2.t.join() within that try block. So it should look like this:
try{
obj.t.join();
obj1.t.join();
obj2.t.join();
}
catch(InterruptedException e)
{
System.out.println("Interrupted.");
}
int average = obj.getAverage();
int max = obj1.getMax();
int min = obj2.getMin();
And then do whatever you want with these numbers.
As for some general comments, firstly I would not have a thread object as an attribute within the runnable class, nor have the start() method within the constructor. Instead, within the main class, I would encourage you to create three thread objects with an instance of each runnable class, and then invoke the start() method on each of them. Furthermore, instead of the three runnable
classes all interacting with the same static array found in Q7Main, I would instead update their
constructors to accept the array as a parameter in the constructor, and then have each of them interact with a unique array object when their run method is invoked. Otherwise, you have an issue that when one thread changes the value of something in the array, you get unexpected results.
Of course in this case none of your classes do that, but its something to keep in mind.
For example
Q2Thread obj =new Q2Thread("Average", arr);
Q2MaxThread obj1 = new Q2MaxThread("Maximum", arr);
Q2MinThread obj2 = new Q2MinThread("Minimum", arr);
Thread avThread = new Thread(obj);
Thread maxThread = new Thread(obj1);
Thread minThread= new Thread(obj2);
avThread.start();
maxThread.start();
minThread.start();
try{
avThread.join();
maxThread.join();
minThread.join();
}
catch(InterruptedException e)
{
System.out.println("Interrupted.");
}
int average = obj.getAverage();
int max = obj1.getMax();
int min = obj2.getMin();
Further to the #ElvenAshwin answer you should probably take three classes as private inner class.... good practice as you build bigger things you dont pollute public api. As an alternate and good exercise, think about doing it with lambdas in java 8. Its just a function you need not the class.

cachedThreadPool not working as I expected

I'm playing around with threads and I don't understand why this isn't working as I thought.
I am trying to calculate a sum using threads and was expecting for the thread pool to wait for all tasks to finish by the time I print out the result (due to the shutdown() call and the isTerminated() check).
What am I missing here?
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
public class Test5 {
private Integer sum= new Integer(0);
public static void main(String[] args) {
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
Test5 obj = new Test5();
for(int i=0; i<1000; i++){
pool.execute(obj.new Adding());
}
pool.shutdown();
while(!pool.isTerminated()) {
//could be empty loop...
System.out.println(" Is it done? : " + pool.isTerminated());
}
System.out.println(" Is it done? : " + pool.isTerminated());
System.out.println("Sum is " + obj.sum);
}
class Adding implements Runnable {
public void run() {
synchronized(this) {
int tmp = sum;
tmp+=1;
sum=new Integer(tmp);
}
}
}
}
While I do get good results, I also get output such as this:
Is it done? : true
Sum is 983
You need to sync on the main object instance. I'm using int below, Integer will work too (needs to initialized to zero explicitly).
Here is the working code
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
public class AppThreadsSum {
int sum;
public static void main(String[] args) {
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
AppThreadsSum app = new AppThreadsSum();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
pool.execute(app.new Adding());
}
pool.shutdown();
while (!pool.isTerminated()) {
System.out.println(" Is it done? : " + pool.isTerminated());
}
System.out.println(" Is it done? : " + pool.isTerminated());
System.out.println("Sum is " + app.sum);
}
class Adding implements Runnable {
public void run() {
synchronized (AppThreadsSum.this) {
sum += 1;
}
}
}
}
p.s. Busy waiting is an anti-pattern to be avoided (copied from the neighbor answer to be complete and aware of this important thing, see comments)
You have a number of issues.
Your code is not threadsafe
Busy waiting is an anti-pattern to be avoided.
What do i mean by 1.?
Lets suppose we have two threads, A & B.
A reads sum into tmp as 1
B reads sum into tmp as 1
A increments sum to 2
A writes sum as 2
B increments sum to 2
B writes sum as 2
So we end up with 2 after two increments. No quite right.
Now you may say "but I have used synchronized, this should not happen". Well, you haven't.
When you create your Adding instances you new each one. You have 1000 separate Adding instances.
When you synchronized(this) you are synchronizing on the current instance, not across all Adding. So your synchronized block does nothing.
Now, the simple solution would be to use synchronized(Adding.class).
The synchronized(Adding.class) will make the code block synchronized correctly across all Adding instances.
The good solution would be to use an AtmoicInteger rather than an Integer as this increments atomically and is designed for exactly this sort of task.
Now onto 2.
You have a while(thing){} loop, this basically runs the thread like crazy testing thousands of times a millisecond until thing is true. This is a huge waste of CPU cycles. An ExecutorService has a special, blocking, method that waits until it has shutdown, awaitTermination.
Here is an example:
static final AtomicInteger sum = new AtomicInteger(0);
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
pool.execute(new Adding());
}
pool.shutdown();
pool.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.DAYS);
System.out.println(" Is it done? : " + pool.isTerminated());
System.out.println("Sum is " + sum);
}
static class Adding implements Runnable {
public void run() {
sum.addAndGet(1);
}
}
I would also suggest not using a cachedThreadPool in this circumstance as you have 1000 Runnables being submitted and this will generate far more Threads than you have CPUs. I would suggest using newFixedThreadPool with a sane number of Threads.
I'm not even going to go into the use of int literals and Integer and why new Integer() is not needed.

Getting value to display for Java CurrentAccount class

package bankAccount;
public class CurrentAccount {
int account[];
int lastMove;
int startingBalance = 1000;
CurrentAccount() {
lastMove = 0;
account = new int[10];
}
public void deposit(int value) {
account[lastMove] = value;
lastMove++;
}
public void draw(int value) {
account[lastMove] = value;
lastMove++;
}
public int settlement() {
int result = 0;
for (int i=0; i<account.length; i++) {
result = result + account[i] + startingBalance;
System.out.println("Result = " + result);
}
return result;
}
public static void main(String args[]) {
CurrentAccount c = new CurrentAccount();
c.deposit(10);
}
}
At the moment, when I run the class, the expected System.out.println does not appear, and if I simply move public static void main(String[] args) to the top, this generates multiple red points. What is the best way for me to refactor my code so it works in the expected way?
you can have another class called Main in the file Main.java in which you can write your
public static void main(String args[])
and call
c.settlement();
in you main() to print.
Also one more advice,
in your constructor you have
account = new int[10];
which can hold only 10 ints.
in your deposit() and draw() you are not checking the account size. When the value of lastMove is more than 10 , the whole code blows up.
Hence I suggest you to use ArrayList
You never called the settlement method...
public static void main(String args[]) {
CurrentAccount c = new CurrentAccount();
c.deposit(10);
c.settlement();
}
I have the feeling that you come from some non-OOP language, like C or PHP. So some explanation:
The main method is static: that means it "exists" even when there is no object instance created, it can be thought of as if it belonged to the class instance.
on the contrary, for the other methods to "work", an instance is required.
This way the main method can be (and is actually) used as the entry point of the application
It is executed, and when it exists, (if no other threads are left running) the application terminates.
so nothing else is run that is outside of this method just by itself...
so if you don't call c.settlement(); - it won't happen...
Other notes:
Running main doesn't create an instance of the enclosing class
with new CurrentAccount(), you create an object instance, which has states it stores, and can be manipulated
be careful with arrays, they have to be taken care of, which tends to be inconvenient at times...
Why do you expect the printed output to appear? You don't actually call the settlement method, so that command is not executed.
You did not call settlement.. so nothing appears
if you add c.settlement... it is fine..
You have not called deposit() and settlement() in the main method untill you call, You cannot get expected output.

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