Java Multithreading concept and join() method

Question

I'm confused in join() method used in Threads in Java. In the following code:

// Using join() to wait for threads to finish.
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 DemoJoin {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        NewThread ob1 = new NewThread("One");
        NewThread ob2 = new NewThread("Two");
        NewThread ob3 = new NewThread("Three");
        System.out.println("Thread One is alive: "
                + ob1.t.isAlive());
        System.out.println("Thread Two is alive: "
                + ob2.t.isAlive());
        System.out.println("Thread Three is alive: "
                + ob3.t.isAlive());
// wait for threads to finish
        try {
            System.out.println("Waiting for threads to finish.");
            ob1.t.join();
            ob2.t.join();
            ob3.t.join();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            System.out.println("Main thread Interrupted");
        }
        System.out.println("Thread One is alive: "
                + ob1.t.isAlive());
        System.out.println("Thread Two is alive: "
                + ob2.t.isAlive());
        System.out.println("Thread Three is alive: "
                + ob3.t.isAlive());
        System.out.println("Main thread exiting.");
    }
}

Sample output from this program is shown here:

New thread: Thread[One,5,main]
New thread: Thread[Two,5,main]
New thread: Thread[Three,5,main]
Thread One is alive: true
Thread Two is alive: true
Thread Three is alive: true
Waiting for threads to finish.
One: 5
Two: 5
Three: 5
One: 4
Two: 4
Three: 4
One: 3
Two: 3
Three: 3
One: 2
Two: 2
Three: 2
One: 1
Two: 1
Three: 1
Two exiting.
Three exiting.
One exiting.
Thread One is alive: false
Thread Two is alive: false
Thread Three is alive: false
Main thread Exiting

In the above code :

1. I'm not able to understand the flow of execution of the program, And when ob1 is created then the constructor is called where t.start() is written but still run() method is not executed rather main() method continues execution. So why is this happening?

2. join() method is used to wait until the thread on which it is called does not terminates, but here in output we see alternate outputs of the thread why??

And if the use of join is this then what is the use of synchronized??

I know I'm missing a basic concept here, but I'm not able to figure it out so please help.

Answer 1

You must understand , threads scheduling is controlled by thread scheduler.So, you cannot guarantee the order of execution of threads under normal circumstances.

However, you can use join() to wait for a thread to complete its work.

For example, in your case

ob1.t.join();

This statement will not return until thread t has finished running.

Try this,

class Demo {
   Thread t = new Thread(
                 new Runnable() {
                     public void run () {
                         //do something
                     }
                  }
    );
    Thread t1 = new Thread(
                 new Runnable() {
                     public void run () {
                         //do something
                     }
                  }
    );
    t.start(); // Line 15
    t.join();  // Line 16
    t1.start();
}

In the above example, your main thread is executing. When it encounters line 15, thread t is available at thread scheduler. As soon as main thread comes to line 16, it will wait for thread t to finish.

NOTE that t.join did not do anything to thread t or to thread t1. It only affected the thread that called it (i.e., the main() thread).

Edited:

t.join(); needs to be inside the try block because it throws the InterruptedException exception, otherwise you will get an error at compile time. So, it should be:

try{
    t.join();
}catch(InterruptedException e){
    // ...
}