Question

Is it safe/acceptable practice to lock on a private field variable (instead of using a lock object)? This way, I could have different locks for different purposes. Example below:

class Test {
  private Integer x = 0;
  private Integer y = 0;

  public void incrementX() {
    synchronized(x) {
      x++;
    }
  }

  public void decrementX() {
    synchronized(x) {
      x++;
    }
  }

  public void incrementY() {
    synchronized(y) {
      y++;
    }
  }

  public void decrementY() {
    synchronized(y) {
      y++;
    }
  }

Or should I have a lock object for each private member I wish to lock? Example:

class Test {
  private final Object xLock = new Object();
  private final Object yLock = new Object();
  private Integer x = 0;
  private Integer y = 0;

...

}

Or should I just have a single general lock and use that for all private variables that require locking? Example:

class Test {
  private final Object objLock = new Object();
  private Integer x = 0;
  private Integer y = 0;

...

}

Answer 1

Beware to always use a final member var for the lock! If you use an Integer, for example, and you plan to change it, that will be very bad practice since each call will see a different object and cause a data race.

Whether you use one or several locks depends on the coordination scheme you want to achieve, so it’s entirely domain-specific. You must think through carefully which operations are and which aren’t mutually exclusive and assign locks to them appropriately. There is no single best practice here.

If you have two orthogonal operations on your object that may happen simultaneously without causing any datarace, that’s a case for two locks. In your example there are two Integers, each changing independently. I see this as a case for two locks. If you had more complex code where in at least one operation you needed to access both Integers, that would tie them together and then you would need a single lock.