Question

I have a pretty simple problem, in wich I try to exchange an object ( in this case an array of int) between two task : Producer and Consumer. The Producer class produces an array of int and than it tries to exchange it with the Consumer array ( which is an empty array) using an Exchanger object. But it seems that it doesn’t work: when the Consumer tries to print the array, it gets nothing.

public class Producer implements Runnable{
private Exchanger<List<Integer>> exchanger;
private List<Integer> ints = new ArrayList<Integer>();

public Producer(Exchanger<List<Integer>> ex) {
    this.exchanger = ex;
}

public void run() {
    RandomGenerator.Integer gen = new RandomGenerator.Integer();
    try{
    while(!Thread.interrupted()) {
        for (int i = 0;i < Test.LIST_SIZE;i++) 
            ints.add(gen.next());
        exchanger.exchange(ints);
        //for(Integer x : ints) 
            //System.out.print(" " + x);
        //System.out.println();
    }
    }catch(InterruptedException e) {
        System.out.println("Producer interrupted");
    }
}
}


public class Consumer implements Runnable {
private Exchanger<List<Integer>> exchanger;
private List<Integer> ints = new ArrayList<Integer>();

public Consumer(Exchanger<List<Integer>> ex) {
    this.exchanger = ex;
}

public void run() {
    try{
    while(!Thread.interrupted()) {
        exchanger.exchange(ints);
        System.out.println("Consumer:");
        for(Integer x : ints) {
            System.out.print(" " + x);
            ints.remove(x);
        }
        System.out.println();
    }
    } catch(InterruptedException e) {
        System.out.println("Consumer interrupted");
    }
}
}


public class Test {
public static final int LIST_SIZE = 10;

public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
    ExecutorService exec = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
    Exchanger<List<Integer>> exchanger = new Exchanger<List<Integer>>();
    exec.execute(new Producer(exchanger));
    exec.execute(new Consumer(exchanger));
    TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(5);
    exec.shutdownNow();
}

If i uncomment the lines in Producer i see that the numbers generated are still there. So why does it not exchange the object?

Answer 1

The exchanger does not swap the references in place, but returns the exchanged object. So you should write something like:

List<Integer> received = exchanger.exchange(ints);
System.out.println("Consumer:");
for(Integer x : received) {
    System.out.print(" " + x);
        ...
}

BTW, I don’t think exchangers are appropriate for producer/consumers…