Page History

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This noncompliant code example explicitly invokes run() in the context of the current thread.:

public final class Foo implements Runnable {
  @Override public void run() {
    // ...
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Foo foo = new Foo();
    new Thread(foo).run();
  }
}

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This compliant solution correctly uses the start() method to tell the Java runtimes runtime to start a new thread.:

public final class Foo implements Runnable {
  @Override public void run() {
    // ...
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Foo foo = new Foo();
    new Thread(foo).start();
  }
}

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THI00-EX0: The run() method may be directly invoked during unit testing. Note that this method cannot be used to test a class for multithreaded use.

Given a Thread object that has been was constructed with a runnable argument, when invoking the Thread.run() method, the Thread object may be cast to Runnable to eliminate analyzer diagnostics.:

public void sampleRunTest() {

  Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
      @Override public void run() {
        // ...
      }
    });
  
  ((Runnable) thread).run();  // THI00-EX0: Does not start a new thread

}

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Automated Detection

Automated detection of direct invocations of Thread.run() methods is straightforward. Sound automated determination of which specific invocations are permitted may be infeasible. Heuristic approaches may be useful.

Related Guidelines

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Android provides a couple of solutions for threading. The Android Developers Blog's article "Painless threadingThreading" discusses those solutions.

Bibliography

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