Page History

Thread start-up startup can be misleading because sometimes the code appears can appear to be performing the function correctly , when it is actually being executed by the wrong thread. Ensure that threads are started correctly.
Invoking the Thread.start() method tells instructs the Java runtime to start executing the thread's run() method using the started thread. Invoking a Thread object's run() method directly is incorrect. When a a Thread object's run() method is invoked directly, the statements in the run() method are executed by the current thread , rather than by the newly created thread. Furthermore, if the Thread object was constructed by instantiating a subclass of Thread that fails to override the run() method rather than being constructed from a Runnable object, any calls to the subclass's run() method would invoke Thread.run(), which does nothing.

...

public void sampleRunTest() {

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

}

...

THI00-EX1: Runtime system code involved in starting new threads is permitted to invoke a Thread object's run() method directly; this is an obvious necessity for a working Java runtime system. Note that the likelihood that this exception applies to user-written code is vanishingly small.

Risk Assessment

Failing Failure to start threads correctly can cause unexpected behavior.

...

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

Related Guidelines

Bibliography

...