How do I prove programmatically that StringBuilder is not threadsafe?

Question

How do I prove programmatically that StringBuilder is not threadsafe?

I tried this, but it is not working:

public class Threadsafe {
            


        

Answer 1

Consider the following test.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;

import org.junit.Assert;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;

public class NotThreadSafe {

    private static final int CHARS_PER_THREAD = 1_000_000;
    private static final int NUMBER_OF_THREADS = 4;

    private StringBuilder builder;

    @Before
    public void setUp() {
        builder = new StringBuilder();
    }

    @Test
    public void testStringBuilder() throws ExecutionException, InterruptedException {
        Runnable appender = () -> {
            for (int i = 0; i < CHARS_PER_THREAD; i++) {
                builder.append('A');
            }
        };
        ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NUMBER_OF_THREADS);
        List> futures = new ArrayList<>();
        for (int i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_THREADS; i++) {
            futures.add(executorService.submit(appender));
        }
        for (Future future : futures) {
            future.get();
        }
        executorService.shutdown();
        String builtString = builder.toString();
        Assert.assertEquals(CHARS_PER_THREAD * NUMBER_OF_THREADS, builtString.length());
    }
}

This is intended to prove that StringBuilder is not thread-safe by proof by contradiction method. When run, it always throws exception like following:

java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 73726

    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:192)
    at NotThreadSafe.testStringBuilder(NotThreadSafe.java:37)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:50)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:12)
    at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:47)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.InvokeMethod.evaluate(InvokeMethod.java:17)
    at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunBefores.evaluate(RunBefores.java:26)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runLeaf(ParentRunner.java:325)
    at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:78)
    at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:57)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:290)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:71)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:288)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:58)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:268)
    at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:363)
    at org.junit.runner.JUnitCore.run(JUnitCore.java:137)
    at com.intellij.junit4.JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.startRunnerWithArgs(JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.java:68)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.IdeaTestRunner$Repeater.startRunnerWithArgs(IdeaTestRunner.java:47)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.prepareStreamsAndStart(JUnitStarter.java:242)
    at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:70)
Caused by: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 73726
    at java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder.append(AbstractStringBuilder.java:650)
    at java.lang.StringBuilder.append(StringBuilder.java:202)
    at NotThreadSafe.lambda$testStringBuilder$0(NotThreadSafe.java:28)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Therefore, StringBuilder is broken when used by multiple threads.