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.
As you can see, after the calls to join( ) return, the threads have stopped executing.
Thread Priorities
Thread priorities are used by the thread scheduler to decide when each thread should be
allowed to run. In theory, higher-priority threads get more CPU time than lower-priority
threads. In practice, the amount of CPU time that a thread gets often depends on several
factors besides its priority. (For example, how an operating system implements multitasking
can affect the relative availability of CPU time.) A higher-priority thread can also preempt a
lower-priority one. For instance, when a lower-priority thread is running and a higher-priority
thread resumes (from sleeping or waiting on I/O, for example), it will preempt the lower-
priority thread.
In theory, threads of equal priority should get equal access to the CPU. But you need to
be careful. Remember, Java is designed to work in a wide range of environments. Some of
those environments implement multitasking fundamentally differently than others. For safety,
threads that share the same priority should yield control once in a while. This ensures that
all threads have a chance to run under a nonpreemptive operating system. In practice, even
in nonpreemptive environments, most threads still get a chance to run, because most threads
inevitably encounter some blocking situation, such as waiting for I/O. When this happens,
the blocked thread is suspended and other threads can run. But, if you want smooth
multithreaded execution, you are better off not relying on this. Also, some types of tasks
are CPU-intensive. Such threads dominate the CPU. For these types of threads, you want
to yield control occasionally so that other threads can run.
To set a thread's priority, use the setPriority( ) method, which is a member of Thread.
This is its general form:
final void setPriority(int level)
Here, level specifies the new priority setting for the calling thread. The value of level must be
within the range MIN_PRIORITY and MAX_PRIORITY. Currently, these values are 1 and
10, respectively. To return a thread to default priority, specify NORM_PRIORITY, which is
currently 5. These priorities are defined as static final variables within Thread.
You can obtain the current priority setting by calling the getPriority( ) method of Thread,
shown here:
final int getPriority( )
Search WWH :
