ThreadLocal

ThreadLocal为解决多线程程序的并发问题提供了一种新的思路。使用这个工具类可以很简洁地编写出优美的多线程程序。

　　当使用ThreadLocal维护变量时，ThreadLocal为每个使用该变量的线程提供独立的变量副本，所以每一个线程都可以独立地改变自己的副本，而不会影响其它线程所对应的副本。

　　从线程的角度看，目标变量就象是线程的本地变量，这也是类名中“Local”所要表达的意思。

那么ThreadLocal是如何做到的呢？上图。

图没看懂？那我们来看一下源码：

public class ThreadLocal<T> {
    /**
     * ThreadLocals rely on per-thread hash maps attached to each thread
     * (Thread.threadLocals and inheritableThreadLocals).  The ThreadLocal
     * objects act as keys, searched via threadLocalHashCode.  This is a
     * custom hash code (useful only within ThreadLocalMaps) that eliminates
     * collisions in the common case where consecutively constructed
     * ThreadLocals are used by the same threads, while remaining well-behaved
     * in less common cases.
     */
    private final int threadLocalHashCode = nextHashCode();

    /**
     * The next hash code to be given out. Accessed only by like-named method.
     */
    private static int nextHashCode = 0;

    /**
     * The difference between successively generated hash codes - turns
     * implicit sequential thread-local IDs into near-optimally spread
     * multiplicative hash values for power-of-two-sized tables.
     */
    private static final int HASH_INCREMENT = 0x61c88647;

    /**
     * Compute the next hash code. The static synchronization used here
     * should not be a performance bottleneck. When ThreadLocals are
     * generated in different threads at a fast enough rate to regularly
     * contend on this lock, memory contention is by far a more serious
     * problem than lock contention.
     */
    private static synchronized int nextHashCode() {
        int h = nextHashCode;
        nextHashCode = h + HASH_INCREMENT;
        return h;
    }

    /**
     * Creates a thread local variable.
     */
    public ThreadLocal() {
    }

    /**
     * Returns the value in the current thread's copy of this thread-local
     * variable.  Creates and initializes the copy if this is the first time
     * the thread has called this method.
     *
     * @return the current thread's value of this thread-local
     */
    public T get() {
        Thread t = Thread.currentThread();
        ThreadLocalMap map = getMap(t);
        if (map != null)
            return (T)map.get(this);

        // Maps are constructed lazily.  if the map for this thread
        // doesn't exist, create it, with this ThreadLocal and its
        // initial value as its only entry.
        T value = initialValue();
        createMap(t, value);
        return value;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the current thread's copy of this thread-local variable
     * to the specified value.  Many applications will have no need for
     * this functionality, relying solely on the {@link #initialValue}
     * method to set the values of thread-locals.
     *
     * @param value the value to be stored in the current threads' copy of
     *        this thread-local.
     */
    public void set(T value) {
        Thread t = Thread.currentThread();
        ThreadLocalMap map = getMap(t);
        if (map != null)
            map.set(this, value);
        else
            createMap(t, value);
    }

    /**
     * Get the map associated with a ThreadLocal. Overridden in
     * InheritableThreadLocal.
     *
     * @param  t the current thread
     * @return the map
     */
    ThreadLocalMap getMap(Thread t) {
        return t.threadLocals;
    }

    /**
     * Create the map associated with a ThreadLocal. Overridden in
     * InheritableThreadLocal.
     *
     * @param t the current thread
     * @param firstValue value for the initial entry of the map
     * @param map the map to store.
     */
    void createMap(Thread t, T firstValue) {
        t.threadLocals = new ThreadLocalMap(this, firstValue);
    }

    .......

    /**
     * ThreadLocalMap is a customized hash map suitable only for
     * maintaining thread local values. No operations are exported
     * outside of the ThreadLocal class. The class is package private to
     * allow declaration of fields in class Thread.  To help deal with
     * very large and long-lived usages, the hash table entries use
     * WeakReferences for keys. However, since reference queues are not
     * used, stale entries are guaranteed to be removed only when
     * the table starts running out of space.
     */
    static class ThreadLocalMap {

    ........

    }

}