Thread.sleep() VS Executor.scheduleWithFixedDelay()

Question

Goal: Execute certain code every once in a while.

Question: In terms of performance, is there a significant difference between:

while(true) {
    exe         


        

Answer 1

Since you haven't mentioned the Java version, so, things might change.

As I recall from the source code of Java, the prime difference that comes is the way things are written internally.

For Sun Java 1.6 if you use the second approach the native code also brings in the wait and notify calls to the system. So, in a way more thread efficient and CPU friendly.

But then again you loose the control and it becomes more unpredictable for your code - consider you want to sleep for 10 seconds.

So, if you want more predictability - surely you can go with option 1.

Also, on a side note, in the legacy systems when you encounter things like this - 80% chances there are now better ways of doing it- but the magic numbers are there for a reason(the rest 20%) so, change it at own risk :)