easy deadlocking in java

Traced down a stupid dead lock in an application today(thank god, jstack exists), I never realized it was so easy to produce a dead lock with *one* thread.

Look at the following code...

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        
        ReentrantReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock();
        ReadLock rlock = lock.readLock();
        WriteLock wlock = lock.writeLock();
        
        try {
            System.out.println("Aquiring read lock...");
            rlock.lock();
            System.out.println("Aquiring write lock...");
            //gets blocked here
            wlock.lock();
            System.out.println("Got write lock as well");
        } finally {
            wlock.unlock();
            rlock.unlock();
        }
        System.out.println("Finished.");
    }
}

Above code gets blocked at wlock.lock() as read lock can not be upgraded to write lock.

Whats worse is that other threads will now block even to acquire a read lock because main thread is waiting to acquire a write lock. Essentially, with all likelihood, your whole application will stop working ;).

 Here is the code demonstrating that other thread will block even for a read lock when nobody really has a write lock(and this behavior is implemented to save the thread, waiting to acquire write lock, from starving).

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        
        ReentrantReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock();
        ReadLock rlock = lock.readLock();
        WriteLock wlock = lock.writeLock();
        
        try {
            System.out.println("Aquiring read lock...");
            rlock.lock();
            
            tryAcquiringReadLockInAnotherThread(rlock);
            System.out.println("Aquiring write lock...");

            //gets blocked here
            wlock.lock();
            System.out.println("Got write lock as well");
        } finally {
            wlock.unlock();
            rlock.unlock();
        }
        System.out.println("Finished.");
    }
    
    private static void tryAcquiringReadLockInAnotherThread(final ReadLock rlock) {
        Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(1000);
                    System.out.println("Trying to aquire read lock in other thread...");
                    //gets blocked here
                    rlock.lock();
                    System.out.println("Acquired read lock in other thread.");
                } catch(InterruptedException ex) {
                    //do not do this in real program :)
                    ex.printStackTrace();
                }finally {
                    rlock.unlock();
                }
            }
        });
        t.start();
    }
}

I tried it on following java version..

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_30"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_30-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.5-b03, mixed mode)

Ref: ReentrantReadWriteLock