Threads are essential to Java programming, but learning to use them effectively is a nontrivial task. This new edition of the classic Java Threads shows you how to take full advantage of Java's threading facilities and brings you up-to-date with the watershed changes in Java 2 Standard Edition Version 5.0 Q2SE 5.0). The book provides a thorough, step-by-step approach to threads programming.

Java's threading system is quite simple, relative to other threading systems. In earlier versions of Java, this simplicity came with tradeoffs: some of the advanced features in other threading systems were not available in Java. J2SE 5.0 changes all that: it provides a large number of new thread-related classes that make the task of writing multithreaded programs that much easier.

Java Threads, Third Edition, has been thoroughly expanded and revised. It incorporates the concurrency utilities from Java.util.concurrent throughout. New chapters cover thread performance, using threads with Swing, threads and Collection classes, thread pools, and threads and I/O (traditional, new, and interrupted). Developers who cannot yet deploy J2SE 5.0 can use thread utilities provided in the Appendix to achieve similar functionality with earlier versions of Java.

Topics include:

• Lock starvation and deadlock detection
• Atomic classes and minimal synchronization (J2SE 5.0)
• Interaction of Java threads with Swing, I/O, and Collection classes
• Programmatically controlled locks and condition variables (J2SE 5.0)
• Thread performance and security
• Thread pools Q2SE 5.0)
• Thread groups
• Platform-specific thread scheduling
• Task schedulers Q2SE 5.0)
• Parallelizing loops for multiprocessor machines

• Introduction to Threads
• Thread Creation and Management
• Data Synchronization
• Thread Notification
• Minimal Synchronization Techniques
• Advanced Synchronization Topics
• Threads and Swing
• Threads and Collection Classes
• Thread Scheduling
• Thread Pools
• Task Scheduling
• Threads and I/O
• Miscellaneous Thread Topics
• Thread Performance
• Parallelizing Loops for Multiprocessor Machines
• Appendix: Superseded Threading Utilities