Doing Two or More Tasks At Once: Threads

Customizing a Thread's run Method

The run method gives a thread something to do. Its code implements the thread's running behavior. It can do anything that can be encoded in Java statements: compute a list of prime's, sort some data, perform some animation.

The Thread class implements a generic thread that, by default, does nothing. That is, the implementation of its run method is empty. This is not particularly useful, so the Thread class defines API that lets a Runnable object provide a more interesting run method for a thread.

There are two techniques for providing a run method for a thread:

• Subclassing Thread and Overriding run
• Implementing the Runnable Interface

Doing Two or More Tasks At Once: Threads