RE: Memory leak in java.lang.Thread ?

[Jeroen Frijters]

Archie Cobbs wrote:
> Archie Cobbs wrote:
> > What happens when you run this program:
> > 
> >     public class ThreadLeak {
> >     public static void main(String[] args) {
> >         while (true)
> >             new Thread();
> >     }
> >     }
> > 
> > I get an OutOfMemoryError.
> 
> Now I realize that Sun's JDK has the same bug:
> 
>    http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4410846
> 
> Can we fix this simply by having the references from the
> ThreadGroup -> Thread be via weak references?
> 
> I'm not sure why Sun hasn't done that already.

Because it would mean that the semantics change. There could be code
that does:

new Thread("MyThread");
...
...
ThreadGroup g = Thread.currentThread().getThreadGroup();
Thread[] threads = new Thread[g.activeCount()];
g.enumerate(threads);
for(int i = 0; i < threads.length; i++)
{
  if(threads[i].getName("MyThread"))
    threads[i].start();
}

Now I don't know why anyone would want to do this, but I don't see why
you'd do while(true) new Thread() either ;-)

Regards,
Jeroen