java - The code example which can prove "volatile" declare should be used

Question

Currently I can't understand when we should use volatile to declare variable.

I have do some study and searched some materials about it for a long time and know that when a field is declared volatile, the compiler and runtime are put on notice that this variable is shared and that operations on it should not be reordered with other memory operations.

However, I still can't understand in what scenario we should use it. I mean can someone provide any example code which can prove that using "volatile" brings benefit or solve problems compare to without using it?

Answer 1

Here is an example of why volatile is necessary. If you remove the keyword volatile, thread 1 may never terminate. (When I tested on Java 1.6 Hotspot on Linux, this was indeed the case - your results may vary as the JVM is not obliged to do any caching of variables not marked volatile.)

public class ThreadTest {
  volatile boolean running = true;

  public void test() {
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
      public void run() {
        int counter = 0;
        while (running) {
          counter++;
        }
        System.out.println("Thread 1 finished. Counted up to " + counter);
      }
    }).start();
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
      public void run() {
        // Sleep for a bit so that thread 1 has a chance to start
        try {
          Thread.sleep(100);
        } catch (InterruptedException ignored) { 
         // catch block
        }
        System.out.println("Thread 2 finishing");
        running = false;
      }
    }).start();
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    new ThreadTest().test();
  }
}