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How to stop all threads as soon as one is finished?

I have 5 threads (5 instances of one Runnable class) starting approximately at the same time (using CyclicBarrier) and I need to stop them all as soon as one of them finished.
Currently, I have a static volatile boolean field threadsOver that I'm setting to true at the end of doSomething(), the method that run() is calling.
private static final CyclicBarrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier(5);
private static volatile boolean threadsOver;
#Override
public void run() {
try {
/* waiting for all threads to have been initialised,
so as to start them at the same time */
barrier.await();
doSomething();
} catch (InterruptedException | BrokenBarrierException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void doSomething() {
// while something AND if the threads are not over yet
while (someCondition && !threadsOver) {
// some lines of code
}
// if the threads are not over yet, it means I'm the first one to finish
if (!threadsOver) {
// so I'm telling the other threads to stop
threadsOver = true;
}
}
The problem with that code is that the code in doSomething() is executing too fast and as a result, the threads that finish after the first one are already over by the time that the first thread noticed them.
I tried adding some delay in doSomething() using Thread.sleep(), which reduced the number of threads which finished even after the first one, but there are still some times where 2 or 3 threads will finish execution completely.
How could I make sure that when one thread is finished, all of the others don't execute all the way to the end?

First where I copied code snippets from: https://www.baeldung.com/java-executor-service-tutorial .
As you have 5 tasks of which every one can produce the result, I prefer Callable, but Runnable with a side effect is handled likewise.
The almost simultaneous start, the Future task aspect, and picking the first result can be done by invokeAny below:
Callable<Integer> callable1 = () -> {
return 1*2*3*5*7/5;
};
List<Callable<Integer>> callables = List.of(callable1, callable2, ...);
ExecutorService executorService = new ThreadPoolExecutor(5);
Integer results = executorService.invokeAny(callables);
executorService.shutDown();
invokeAny() assigns a collection of tasks to an ExecutorService, causing each to run, and returns the result of a successful execution of one task (if there was a successful execution).

How to enforce timeout and cancel async CompletableFuture Jobs

I am using Java 8, and I want to know the recommended way to enforce timeout on 3 async jobs that I would to execute async and retrieve the result from the future. Note that the timeout is the same for all 3 jobs. I also want to cancel the job if it goes beyond time limit.
I am thinking something like this:
// Submit jobs async
List<CompletableFuture<String>> futures = submitJobs(); // Uses CompletableFuture.supplyAsync
List<CompletableFuture<Void>> all = CompletableFuture.allOf(futures.toArray(new CompletableFuture[0]));
try {
allFutures.get(100L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch (TimeoutException e){
for(CompletableFuture f : future) {
if(!f.isDone()) {
/*
From Java Doc:
#param mayInterruptIfRunning this value has no effect in this
* implementation because interrupts are not used to control
* processing.
*/
f.cancel(true);
}
}
}
List<String> output = new ArrayList<>();
for(CompeletableFuture fu : futures) {
if(!fu.isCancelled()) { // Is this needed?
output.add(fu.join());
}
}
return output;
Will something like this work? Is there a better way?
How to cancel the future properly? Java doc says, thread cannot be interrupted? So, if I were to cancel a future, and call join(), will I get the result immediately since the thread will not be interrupted?
Is it recommended to use join() or get() to get the result after waiting is over?

It is worth noting that calling cancel on CompletableFuture is effectively the same as calling completeExceptionally on the current stage. The cancellation will not impact prior stages. With that said:
In principle, something like this will work assuming upstream cancellation is not necessary (from a pseudocode perspective, the above has syntax errors).
CompletableFuture cancellation will not interrupt the current thread. Cancellation will cause all downstream stages to be triggered immediately with a CancellationException (will short circuit the execution flow).
'join' and 'get' are effectively the same in the case where the caller is willing to wait indefinitely. Join handles wrapping the checked Exceptions for you. If the caller wants to timeout, get will be needed.
Including a segment to illustrate the behavior on cancellation. Note how downstream processes will not be started, but upstream processes continue even after cancellation.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
int maxSleepTime = 1000;
Random random = new Random();
AtomicInteger value = new AtomicInteger();
List<String> calculatedValues = new ArrayList<>();
Supplier<String> process = () -> { try { Thread.sleep(random.nextInt(maxSleepTime)); System.out.println("Stage 1 Running!"); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return Integer.toString(value.getAndIncrement()); };
List<CompletableFuture<String>> stage1 = IntStream.range(0, 10).mapToObj(val -> CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(process)).collect(Collectors.toList());
List<CompletableFuture<String>> stage2 = stage1.stream().map(Test::appendNumber).collect(Collectors.toList());
List<CompletableFuture<String>> stage3 = stage2.stream().map(Test::printIfCancelled).collect(Collectors.toList());
CompletableFuture<Void> awaitAll = CompletableFuture.allOf(stage2.toArray(new CompletableFuture[0]));
try
{
/*Wait 1/2 the time, some should be complete. Some not complete -> TimeoutException*/
awaitAll.get(maxSleepTime / 2, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
}
catch(TimeoutException ex)
{
for(CompletableFuture<String> toCancel : stage2)
{
boolean irrelevantValue = false;
if(!toCancel.isDone())
toCancel.cancel(irrelevantValue);
else
calculatedValues.add(toCancel.join());
}
}
System.out.println("All futures Cancelled! But some Stage 1's may still continue printing anyways.");
System.out.println("Values returned as of cancellation: " + calculatedValues);
Thread.sleep(maxSleepTime);
}
private static CompletableFuture<String> appendNumber(CompletableFuture<String> baseFuture)
{
return baseFuture.thenApply(val -> { System.out.println("Stage 2 Running"); return "#" + val; });
}
private static CompletableFuture<String> printIfCancelled(CompletableFuture<String> baseFuture)
{
return baseFuture.thenApply(val -> { System.out.println("Stage 3 Running!"); return val; }).exceptionally(ex -> { System.out.println("Stage 3 Cancelled!"); return ex.getMessage(); });
}
If it is necessary to cancel the upstream process (ex: cancel some network call), custom handling will be needed.

After calling cancel you cannot join the furure, since you get an exception.
One way to terminate the computation is to let it have a reference to the future and check it periodically: if it was cancelled abort the computation from inside.
This can be done if the computaion is a loop where at each iteration you can do the check.
Do you need it to be a CompletableFuture? Cause another way is to avoid to use a CompleatableFuture, and use a simple Future or a FutureTask instead: if you execute it with an Executor calling future.cancel(true) will terminate the computation if possbile.
Answerring to the question: "call join(), will I get the result immediately".
No you will not get it immediately, it will hang and wait to complete the computation: there is no way to force a computation that takes a long time to complete in a shorter time.
You can call future.complete(value) providing a value to be used as default result by other threads that have a reference to that future.

How should I interrupt and dispose of a group of threads in java?

I'm writing a game engine which performs alhpa-beta search on at a game state, and I'm trying to parallelize it. What I have so far is working at first, and then it seems to slow to a halt. I suspect that this is because I'm not correctly disposing of my threads.
When playing against the computer, the game calls on the getMove() function of a MultiThreadedComputerPlayer object. Here is the code for that method:
public void getMove(){
int n = board.legalMoves.size();
threadList = new ArrayList<WeightedMultiThread>();
moveEvals = new HashMap<Tuple, Integer>();
// Whenever a thread finishes its work at a given depth, it awaits() the other threads
// When all threads are finished, the move evaluations are updated and the threads continue their work.
CyclicBarrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier(n, new Runnable(){
public void run() {
for(WeightedMultiThread t : threadList){
moveEvals.put(t.move, t.eval);
}
}
});
// Prepare and start the threads
for (Tuple move : board.legalMoves) {
MCBoard nextBoard = board.clone();
nextBoard.move(move);
threadList.add(new WeightedMultiThread(nextBoard, weights, barrier));
moveEvals.put(move, 0);
}
for (WeightedMultiThread t : threadList) {t.start();}
// Let the threads run for the maximum amount of time per move
try {
Thread.sleep(timePerMove);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {System.out.println(e);}
for (WeightedMultiThread t : threadList) {
t.stop();
}
// Play the best move
Integer best = infHolder.MIN;
Tuple nextMove = board.legalMoves.get(0);
for (Tuple m : board.legalMoves) {
if (moveEvals.get(m) > best) {
best = moveEvals.get(m);
nextMove = m;
}
}
System.out.println(nextMove + " is the choice of " + name + " given evals:");
for (WeightedMultiThread t : threadList) {
System.out.println(t);
}
board.move(nextMove);
}
And here run() method of the threads in question:
public void run() {
startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
while(true) {
int nextEval = alphabeta(0, infHolder.MIN, infHolder.MAX);
try{barrier.await();} catch (Exception e) {}
eval = nextEval;
depth += 1;
}
}
I need to be able to interrupt all the threads when time is up-- how am I supposed to implement this? As of now I'm constantly catching (and ignoring) InterruptedExceptions.

Thread.stop was deprecated for a reason. When you interrupt a thread in the middle, the thread doesn't have the chance to properly release resources it was using, and doesn't notify other threads of its completion...something that's very important in multi-threaded apps. I'm not surprised your performance tanks; I would be willing to bet your memory usage shoots through the roof. You also don't recycle the threads, you start and stop them without creating new objects, which means whatever broken state the variables were left in is probably still plaguing them.
A better way is to set a flag that tells the thread it should return. So include in your WeightedMultiThread class a boolean named something like shouldQuit, and set it to false every time start() is called. Then, instead of while (true) do while (!shouldQuit), and instead of t.stop(), use t.shouldQuit = true. After you do that to every thread, have another loop that checks each thread for t.isAlive(), and once every thread has returned, go about your business. You should have much better results that way.

This looks like an ideal place to use an ExecutorService. You can create Callable instances that implement the parallel tasks, submit them to the ExecutorService, then use awaitTermination to enforce a timeout.
For example:
public void getMove() {
ExecutorService service = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(board.legalMoves.size());
List<Future<Something>> futures = new ArrayList<Future<Something>>(board.legalMoves.size());
for (Tuple move : board.legalMoves) {
futures.add(service.submit(new WeightedMultiThread(...)));
}
service.awaitTermination(timePerMove, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
service.shutdownNow(); // Terminate all still-running jobs
for (Future<Something> future : futures) {
if (future.isDone()) {
Something something = future.get();
// Add best move logic here
}
}
...
}
Replace Something with something that encapsulates information about the move that has been evaluated. I'd suggest Something be a class that holds the Tuple and its associated score. Your WeightedMultiThread class can do something like this:
class WeightedMultiThread implements Callable<Something> {
public Something call() {
// Compute score
...
// Return an appropriate data structure
return new Something(tuple, score);
}
}
Even better would be to create the ExecutorService once and re-use it for each call to getMove. Creating threads is expensive, so best to only do it once if you can. If you take this approach then you should not call shutdownNow, but instead use the Future.cancel method to terminate jobs that have not completed in time. Make sure your WeightedMultiThread implementation checks for thread interruption and throws an InterruptedException. That's usually a good way to write a long-running task that needs to be interruptible.
EDIT:
Since you're doing a level-by-level exploration of the game space, I'd suggest that you encode that in the getMove function rather than in the Tuple evaluation code, e.g.
public Tuple getMove() {
ExecutorService service = ...
Tuple best = null;
long timeRemaining = MAX_TIME;
for (int depth = 0; depth < MAX_DEPTH && timeRemaining > 0; ++depth) {
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
best = evaluateMoves(depth, service, timeRemaining);
long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
timeRemaining -= (end - start);
}
return best;
}
private Tuple evaluateMoves(int depth, ExecutorService service, long timeRemaining) {
List<Future<Whatever>> futures = service.submit(...); // Create all jobs at this depth
service.awaitTermination(timeRemaining, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
// Find best move
...
return best;
}
That could probably be cleaner, but you get the idea.

The most sensitive way is to use interruption mechanism. Thread.interrupt() and Thread.isInterrupted() methods. This ensures your message will be delivered to a thread even if it sits inside a blocking call (remember some methods declare throwing InterruptedException?)
P.S. It would be useful to read Brian Goetz's "Java Concurrency in Practice" Chapter 7: Cancellation and Shutdown.

How do I return interim results from Callable?

I have Callable object executed using ExecutorService.
How to return interim results from this callable?
I know there is javax.swing.SwingWorker#publish(results) for Swing but I don't use Swing.

There are a couple of ways of doing this. You could do it with a callback or you could do it with a queue.
Here's an example of doing it with a callback:
public static interface Callback<T> {
public void on(T event);
}
Then, an implementation of the callback that does something with your in progress events:
final Callback<String> callback = new Callback<String>() {
public void on(String event) {
System.out.println(event);
}
};
Now you can use the callback in your pool:
Future<String> submit = pool.submit(new Callable<String>() {
public String call() throws Exception {
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
callback.on("process " + i);
}
return "done";
}
});

It is not clear what an "interim result" really is. The interfaces used in the concurrency package simply do not define this, but assume methods that resemble more or less pure functions.
Hence, instead this:
interim = compute something
finalresult = compute something else
do something like this:
interim = compute something
final1 = new Pair( interim, fork(new Future() { compute something else }) )
(Pseudocode, thought to convey the idea, not compileable code)
EDIT The idea is: instead of running a single monolithic block of computations (that happens to reach a state where some "interim results" are available) break it up so that the first task returns the former "interim" result and, at the same time, forks a second task that computes the final result. Of course, a handle to this task must be delivered to the caller so that it eventually can get the final result. Usually, this is done with the Future interface.

You can pass, let's say, an AtomicInteger to your class (the one that will be submitted by the executor) inside that class you increment it's value and from the calling thread you check it's value
Something like this:
public class LongComputation {
private AtomicInteger progress = new AtomicInteger(0);
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException,
ExecutionException {
AtomicInteger progress = new AtomicInteger(0);
LongComputation computation = new LongComputation(progress);
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
Future<Integer> result = executor.submit(() -> computation.compute());
executor.shutdown();
while (!result.isDone()) {
System.out.printf("Progress...%d%%%n", progress.intValue());
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(100);
}
System.out.printf("Result=%d%n", result.get());
}
public LongComputation(AtomicInteger progress) {
this.progress = progress;
}
public int compute() throws InterruptedException {
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(100);
progress.incrementAndGet();
}
return 1_000_000;
}
}

What you're looking for is java.util.concurrent.Future.
A Future represents the result of an asynchronous computation. Methods
are provided to check if the computation is complete, to wait for its
completion, and to retrieve the result of the computation. The result
can only be retrieved using method get when the computation has
completed, blocking if necessary until it is ready. Cancellation is
performed by the cancel method. Additional methods are provided to
determine if the task completed normally or was cancelled. Once a
computation has completed, the computation cannot be cancelled. If you
would like to use a Future for the sake of cancellability but not
provide a usable result, you can declare types of the form Future
and return null as a result of the underlying task.

You would have to roll your own API with something like Observer/Observerable if you want to publish intermediate results as a push. A simpler thing would be to just poll for current state through some self defined method.

Number of active tasks using ThreadPoolExecutor

I am using a ThreadPoolExecutor to execute tasks in my Java application. I have a requirement where I want to get the number of active tasks in the queue at any point in time in the executor queue . I looked up at the javadoc for ThreadPoolExecutor and found two relevant methods: getTaskCount() and getCompletedTaskCount().
Per the documentation, I could get the number of scheduled tasks and completed tasks from the above two methods respectively. But I am not able to find a solution for getting the number of active tasks in the queue at any point in time. I can do something like:
getTaskCount() = getCompletedTaskCount() + failed tasks + active tasks
But the number of failed tasks is not directly available to arrive at the intended calculation.
Am I missing something here ?

I don't think you need to know the failed count with the calculation you're trying to use.
long submitted = executor.getTaskCount();
long completed = executor.getCompletedTaskCount();
long notCompleted = submitted - completed; // approximate
Would be (approximately) sufficient.
Alternatively, you can use getQueue() with size():
int queued = executor.getQueue().size();
int active = executor.getActiveCount();
int notCompleted = queued + active; // approximate
This answer presumes you're looking for a "not yet completed" count. Your question contradicts itself so I'm not completely certain what you're asking. Reply to my comment on your question if this is incorrect, and I'll update this answer accordingly.

Have you tried using the beforeExecute and afterExecute methods? These are called before and after a task is executed. The after execute method even supplies a throwable as a second argument, so you know when a task has failed.
You could add a hook so that beforeExecute increments the value of the active tasks, and afterExecute decrements it. Ofcourse, these methods are called on their respective fields, so that you would have to synchronize the result on a mutual lock Object.
To use these methods, just override the ThreadPoolExecutor object of your choice and add the hook there.
For instance, the following code should hopefully work:
public class MyExecutor extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
//Lock object used for synchronization
private final Object lockObject = new Object();
//Contains the active task count
private int activeTaskCount = 0;
//Failed task count
private int failedTaskCount = 0;
private int succeededTaskCount = 0;
public MyExecutor () {
//call super here with your parameters;
}
public int getActiveTaskCount(){
synchronized(lockObject){
return activeTaskCount;
}
}
public int getFailedTaskCount(){
synchronized(lockObject){
return failedTaskCount ;
}
}
public int getSucceededTaskCount(){
synchronized(lockObject){
return succeededTaskCount ;
}
}
protected void beforeExecute(Thread t,
Runnable r){
super.beforeExecute(t,r);
synchronized(lockObject){
activeTaskCount++;
}
}
protected void afterExecute(Runnable r,Throwable t){
super.afterExecute(r,t);
synchronized(lockObject){
activeTaskCount--;
if(t!=null){
failedTaskCount++;
}else{
succeededTaskCount++;
}
}
}
}