When wil the new Thread() without reference be garbage collected

Question

In the below example, new Thread() doesnt have any reference. Is it possible that it be garbage collected below it is dead ? Also without extending Thread class or implement

Answer 1

No, a Thread which has been can't be garbage collected before the underlying VM thread (whether an OS-thread or not) has finished. I'm not sure offhand whether a Thread which doesn't have any obvious references to it but hasn't been start()-ed ends up causing a leak, or whether it can be collected - the latter, I'd expect.

As for your second question - your code does extend Thread, using an anonymous inner class, here:

new Thread() {
        public void run() {
                foo();
                System.out.print(x + ", ");
        } 
}

I would personally suggest that even if you did want to use an anonymous inner class here, it's generally neater to implement Runnable:

new Thread(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        foo();
        System.out.print(x + ", ");
    } 
})

That way it's clear that you're just providing something to run, rather than trying to change any of the thread's core behaviour.

Answer 2

Your thread will be available for garbage collection once it has finished running. The end of your for loop does not influence it, as the for loop runs in a different thread.

In answer to your second question, you are extending the Thread class by implementing your own run() function

Answer 3

A new thread that has not been started will be garbage collected when it becomes unreachable in the normal way.

A new thread that has been started becomes a garbage collection "root". It won't be garbage collected until (after) it finishes.

In the below example, new Thread() doesnt have any reference. Is it possible that it be garbage collected below it is dead ?

No. It has been started, and hence won't be garbage collected until it finishes / dies. And it does have a reachable reference until (at least) the point at which the start() call returns.

Also without extending Thread class or implementing runnable, how are we creating a thread?

In your example, you have created anonymous subclass of Thread; i.e. a class that extends Thread.