Here\'s the deal. I have a hash map containing data I call \"program codes\", it lives in an object, like so:
Class Metadata
{
private HashMap validProgramC
The assignment will work as long as you're not concerned about reading stale values, and as long as you can guarantee that your hashmap is properly populated on initialization. You should at the least create the hashMap with Collections.unmodifiableMap on the Hashmap to guarantee that your readers won't be changing/deleting objects from the map, and to avoid multiple threads stepping on each others toes and invalidating iterators when other threads destroy.
( writer above is right about the volatile, should've seen that)