Re: Memory leak in java.lang.Thread ?

[Archie Cobbs]

Jeroen Frijters wrote:
> > Now I realize that Sun's JDK has the same bug:
> >
> >   http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4410846
> >
> > Can we fix this simply by having the references from the
> > ThreadGroup -> Thread be via weak references?
>
> Because it would mean that the semantics change. There could be code
> that does:
>
> new Thread("MyThread");
> ...
> ...
> ThreadGroup g = Thread.currentThread().getThreadGroup();
> Thread[] threads = new Thread[g.activeCount()];
> g.enumerate(threads);
> for(int i = 0; i < threads.length; i++)
> {
>   if(threads[i].getName("MyThread"))
>     threads[i].start();
> }

Good point.. this is one of those bugs in the API that
requires the implementation to have a memory leak.

However, I couldn't find any definition of an "active" thread.
Empirically it seems to mean "either not yet started or
still running".

Seems like the "not yet started" part is questionable though.

By the way this is a real problem e.g. in an application where
you create a thread and then decide to start it later (or not)
based on some last minute information.

-Archie

__________________________________________________________________________
Archie Cobbs      *        CTO, Awarix        *      http://www.awarix.com