Which method must be defined by a class implementing the java.lang.runnable interface?

View Discussion

Improve Article

Save Article

View Discussion

Improve Article

Save Article

java.lang.Runnable is an interface that is to be implemented by a class whose instances are intended to be executed by a thread. There are two ways to start a new Thread – Subclass Thread and implement Runnable. There is no need of subclassing a Thread when a task can be done by overriding only run() method of Runnable. 

Steps to create a new thread using Runnable 

1. Create a Runnable implementer and implement the run() method. 
2. Instantiate the Thread class and pass the implementer to the Thread, Thread has a constructor which accepts Runnable instances.
3. Invoke start() of Thread instance, start internally calls run() of the implementer. Invoking start() creates a new Thread that executes the code written in run(). Calling run() directly doesn’t create and start a new Thread, it will run in the same thread. To start a new line of execution, call start() on the thread. 

Example 1

java

public class RunnableDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args)

    {

        System.out.println("Main thread is- "

                        + Thread.currentThread().getName());

        Thread t1 = new Thread(new RunnableDemo().new RunnableImpl());

        t1.start();

    }

    private class RunnableImpl implements Runnable {

        public void run()

        {

            System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName()

                             + ", executing run() method!");

        }

    }

}

Output:

Main thread is- main
Thread-0, executing run() method!

The output shows two active threads in the program – main thread and Thread-0, main method is executed by the Main thread but invoking the start on RunnableImpl creates and starts a new thread – Thread-0. What happens when Runnable encounters an exception ? Runnable can’t throw checked exception but RuntimeException can be thrown from the run(). Uncaught exceptions are handled by the exception handler of the thread, if JVM can’t handle or catch exceptions, it prints the stack trace and terminates the flow. 

Example 2

java

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

public class RunnableDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args)

    {

        System.out.println("Main thread is- " +

                          Thread.currentThread().getName());

        Thread t1 = new Thread(new RunnableDemo().new RunnableImpl());

        t1.start();

    }

    private class RunnableImpl implements Runnable {

        public void run()

        {

            System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName()

                             + ", executing run() method!");

            try {

                throw new FileNotFoundException();

            }

            catch (FileNotFoundException e) {

                System.out.println("Must catch here!");

                e.printStackTrace();

            }

            int r = 1 / 0;

        }

    }

}

Output:

Thread-0, executing run() method!
Must catch here!
java.io.FileNotFoundException
    at RunnableDemo$RunnableImpl.run(RunnableDemo.java:25)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Exception in thread "Thread-0" java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero
    at RunnableDemo$RunnableImpl.run(RunnableDemo.java:31)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

The output shows that Runnable can’t throw checked exceptions, FileNotFoundException in this case, to the callers, it must handle checked exceptions in the run() but RuntimeExceptions (thrown or auto-generated) are handled by the JVM automatically.