Concurrency Utilities

Utility classes commonly useful in concurrent programming. This package includes a few small standardized extensible frameworks, as well as some classes that provide useful functionality and are otherwise tedious or difficult to implement. Here are brief descriptions of the main components. See also the `locks` and `atomic` packages.

## Executors

Interfaces. {@link java.util.concurrent.Executor} is a simple standardized interface for defining custom thread-like subsystems, including thread pools, asynchronous IO, and lightweight task frameworks. Depending on which concrete Executor class is being used, tasks may execute in a newly created thread, an existing task-execution thread, or the thread calling `execute()`, and may execute sequentially or concurrently. {@link java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService} provides a more complete asynchronous task execution framework. An ExecutorService manages queuing and scheduling of tasks, and allows controlled shutdown. The {@link java.util.concurrent.ScheduledExecutorService} subinterface adds support for delayed and periodic task execution. ExecutorServices provide methods arranging asynchronous execution of any function expressed as {@link java.util.concurrent.Callable}, the result-bearing analog of {@link java.lang.Runnable}. A {@link java.util.concurrent.Future} returns the results of a function, allows determination of whether execution has completed, and provides a means to cancel execution.

Implementations. Classes {@link java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor} and {@link java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor} provide tunable, flexible thread pools. The {@link java.util.concurrent.Executors} class provides factory methods for the most common kinds and configurations of Executors, as well as a few utility methods for using them. Other utilities based on Executors include the concrete class {@link java.util.concurrent.FutureTask} providing a common extensible implementation of Futures, and {@link java.util.concurrent.ExecutorCompletionService}, that assists in coordinating the processing of groups of asynchronous tasks.

## Queues

The java.util.concurrent {@link java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentLinkedQueue} class supplies an efficient scalable thread-safe non-blocking FIFO queue. Five implementations in java.util.concurrent support the extended {@link java.util.concurrent.BlockingQueue} interface, that defines blocking versions of put and take: {@link java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue}, {@link java.util.concurrent.ArrayBlockingQueue}, {@link java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue}, {@link java.util.concurrent.PriorityBlockingQueue}, and {@link java.util.concurrent.DelayQueue}. The different classes cover the most common usage contexts for producer-consumer, messaging, parallel tasking, and related concurrent designs.

## Timing

The {@link java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit} class provides multiple granularities (including nanoseconds) for specifying and controlling time-out based operations. Most classes in the package contain operations based on time-outs in addition to indefinite waits. In all cases that time-outs are used, the time-out specifies the minimum time that the method should wait before indicating that it timed-out. Implementations make a "best effort" to detect time-outs as soon as possible after they occur. However, an indefinite amount of time may elapse between a time-out being detected and a thread actually executing again after that time-out.

## Synchronizers

Four classes aid common special-purpose synchronization idioms. {@link java.util.concurrent.Semaphore} is a classic concurrency tool. {@link java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch} is a very simple yet very common utility for blocking until a given number of signals, events, or conditions hold. A {@link java.util.concurrent.CyclicBarrier} is a resettable multiway synchronization point useful in some styles of parallel programming. An {@link java.util.concurrent.Exchanger} allows two threads to exchange objects at a rendezvous point, and is useful in several pipeline designs.

## Concurrent Collections

Besides Queues, this package supplies a few Collection implementations designed for use in multithreaded contexts: {@link java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap}, {@link java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList}, and {@link java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArraySet}.

The "Concurrent" prefix used with some classes in this package is a shorthand indicating several differences from similar "synchronized" classes. For example `java.util.Hashtable` and `Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap())` are synchronized. But {@link java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap} is "concurrent". A concurrent collection is thread-safe, but not governed by a single exclusion lock. In the particular case of ConcurrentHashMap, it safely permits any number of concurrent reads as well as a tunable number of concurrent writes. "Synchronized" classes can be useful when you need to prevent all access to a collection via a single lock, at the expense of poorer scalability. In other cases in which multiple threads are expected to access a common collection, "concurrent" versions are normally preferable. And unsynchronized collections are preferable when either collections are unshared, or are accessible only when holding other locks.

Most concurrent Collection implementations (including most Queues) also differ from the usual java.util conventions in that their Iterators provide weakly consistent rather than fast-fail traversal. A weakly consistent iterator is thread-safe, but does not necessarily freeze the collection while iterating, so it may (or may not) reflect any updates since the iterator was created. @since Android 1.0