I read somewhere below line.
Java volatile keyword doesn't means atomic, its common misconception that after declaring volatile,
++
operation will be atomic, to make the operation atomic you still need to ensure exclusive access usingsynchronized
method or block in Java.
So what will happen if two threads attack a volatile
primitive variable at same time?
Does this mean that whosoever takes lock on it, that will be setting its value first. And if in meantime, some other thread comes up and read old value while first thread was changing its value, then doesn't new thread will read its old value?
What is the difference between Atomic and volatile keyword?
The effect of the volatile
keyword is approximately that each individual read or write operation on that variable is atomic.
Notably, however, an operation that requires more than one read/write -- such as i++
, which is equivalent to i = i + 1
, which does one read and one write -- is not atomic, since another thread may write to i
between the read and the write.
The Atomic
classes, like AtomicInteger
and AtomicReference
, provide a wider variety of operations atomically, specifically including increment for AtomicInteger
.