What is the volatile keyword useful for?

Question

At work today, I came across the volatile keyword in Java. Not being very familiar with it, I found this explanation.

Given the detail in which that arti

Answer 1

One common example for using volatile is to use a volatile boolean variable as a flag to terminate a thread. If you've started a thread, and you want to be able to safely interrupt it from a different thread, you can have the thread periodically check a flag. To stop it, set the flag to true. By making the flag volatile, you can ensure that the thread that is checking it will see it has been set the next time it checks it without having to even use a synchronized block.