Some logistical questions re: threads

Well, just one question, primarily.

Consider the following scenario: Two threads are running in parallel. Each
thread has called System.setOut(PrintStream myOut) to redirect output from
its own printstream ("myOut") to the output. So what happens when thread A
writes to its System.out, and what happens when thread B writes to
System.out? To which thread's "myOut" does the output go? I assume that
the last thread to call System.setOut will get all everything to its myOut,
but that hardly seems fair to the first thread?

This situation should really never matter, but in my situation it does
Also, it is an interesting question - System resources are not thread-safe
and could be hijacked by another thread.

And I guess the question is, is there a way to give different threads their
own System.out, such that they can write to System.out and be able to
predict where it is going?

Thanks,
-Jeremy

 

Well, I don't know anything about the System object in terms of
thread-safing, but if you have 2 threads and need to output to 2
different sources, why not just write to a file? Or a GUI component?
You could make 2 textPanes and just output there...

 

This is an easy question to test--try it out! System.setOut is universal,
so it seems the last one wins, assuming the call itself is threadsafe and
the does not itself conflict.

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey http://www.iviz.com/

 

Write a print stream that uses the current thread to look up print
streams in a hashtable. That way you can have a different print stream
for each thread.

 

There is only one System.out stream. It is synchronized so that individual
calls to print() and println() are atomic. I believe that in general, most
system resources are synchronized where necessary - I can't think of any
that are not. That doesn't prevent fights between threads at a higher
level though, such as where to redirect System.out.

Probably the best thing is for each thread to open and maintain its own
PrintWriter to its own output stream.

Steve