| A thread is a thread of execution in a program. The Java
Virtual Machine allows an application to have multiple threads of
execution running concurrently.
Every thread has a priority. Threads with higher priority are
executed in preference to threads with lower priority.
There are two ways to create a new thread of execution. One is to
declare a class to be a subclass of Thread. This
subclass should override the run method of class
Thread. An instance of the subclass can then be
allocated and started. For example, a thread that computes primes
larger than a stated value could be written as follows:
class PrimeThread extends Thread {
long minPrime;
PrimeThread(long minPrime) {
this.minPrime = minPrime;
}
public void run() {
// compute primes larger than minPrime
. . .
}
}
The following code would then create a thread and start it running:
PrimeThread p = new PrimeThread(143);
p.start();
The other way to create a thread is to declare a class that
implements the Runnable interface. That class then
implements the run method. An instance of the class can
then be allocated, passed as an argument when creating
Thread, and started. The same example in this other
style looks like the following:
class PrimeRun implements Runnable {
long minPrime;
PrimeRun(long minPrime) {
this.minPrime = minPrime;
}
public void run() {
// compute primes larger than minPrime
. . .
}
}
The following code would then create a thread and start it running:
PrimeRun p = new PrimeRun(143);
new Thread(p).start();
version:
12/17/01 (CLDC 1.1)
See Also: java.lang.Runnable
See Also: java.lang.Runtime.exit(int)
See Also: java.lang.Thread.run
since:
JDK1.0, CLDC 1.0 | 