volatile keyword seems to be useless?

Posted by Finbarr on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Finbarr
Published on 2010-05-07T23:43:52Z Indexed on 2010/05/07 23:48 UTC
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import java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

public class Main implements Runnable {

   private final CountDownLatch cdl1 = new CountDownLatch(NUM_THREADS);
   private volatile int bar = 0;
   private AtomicInteger count = new AtomicInteger(0);

   private static final int NUM_THREADS = 25;

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      Main main = new Main();
      for(int i = 0; i < NUM_THREADS; i++)
         new Thread(main).start();
   }

   public void run() {
      int i = count.incrementAndGet();
      cdl1.countDown();
      try {
         cdl1.await();
      } catch (InterruptedException e1) {
         e1.printStackTrace();
      }
      bar = i;
      if(bar != i)
         System.out.println("Bar not equal to i");
      else
         System.out.println("Bar equal to i");
   }

}

Each Thread enters the run method and acquires a unique, thread confined, int variable i by getting a value from the AtomicInteger called count. Each Thread then awaits the CountDownLatch called cdl1 (when the last Thread reaches the latch, all Threads are released). When the latch is released each thread attempts to assign their confined i value to the shared, volatile, int called bar.

I would expect every Thread except one to print out "Bar not equal to i", but every Thread prints "Bar equal to i". Eh, wtf does volatile actually do if not this?

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