How to use wait and notify in Java without IllegalMonitorStateException?

Question

To be able to call notify() you need to synchronize on the same object.

synchronized (someObject) {
    someObject.wait();
}

/* different thread / object */
synchronized (someObject) {
    someObject.notify();
}

While using the wait and notify or notifyAll methods in Java the following things must be remembered:

1. Use notifyAll instead of notify if you expect that more than one thread will be waiting for a lock.
2. The wait and notify methods must be called in a synchronized context. See the link for a more detailed explanation.
3. Always call the wait() method in a loop because if multiple threads are waiting for a lock and one of them got the lock and reset the condition, then the other threads need to check the condition after they wake up to see whether they need to wait again or can start processing.
4. Use the same object for calling wait() and notify() method; every object has its own lock so calling wait() on object A and notify() on object B will not make any sense.

Do you need to thread this at all ? I'm wondering how big your matrices are, and whether there's any benefit in having one thread print whilst the other does the multiplication.

Perhaps it would be worth measuring this time before doing the relatively complex threading work ?

If you do need to thread it, I would create 'n' threads to perform the multiplication of the cells (perhaps 'n' is the number of cores available to you), and then use the ExecutorService and Future mechanism to dispatch multiple multiplications simultaneously.

That way you can optimise the work based on the number of cores, and you're using the higher level Java threading tools (which should make life easier). Write the results back into a receiving matrix, and then simply print this once all your Future tasks have completed.

Let's say you have 'black box' application with some class named BlackBoxClass that has method doSomething();.

Further, you have observer or listener named onResponse(String resp) that will be called by BlackBoxClass after unknown time.

The flow is simple:

private String mResponse = null; 
 ...
BlackBoxClass bbc = new BlackBoxClass();
   bbc.doSomething();
...
@override
public void onResponse(String resp){        
      mResponse = resp;       
}

Lets say we don't know what is going on with BlackBoxClass and when we should get answer but you don't want to continue your code till you get answer or in other word get onResponse call. Here enters 'Synchronize helper':

public class SyncronizeObj {
public void doWait(long l){
    synchronized(this){
        try {
            this.wait(l);
        } catch(InterruptedException e) {
        }
    }
}

public void doNotify() {
    synchronized(this) {
        this.notify();
    }
}

public void doWait() {
    synchronized(this){
        try {
            this.wait();
        } catch(InterruptedException e) {
        }
    }
}
}

Now we can implement what we want:

public class Demo {

private String mResponse = null; 
 ...
SyncronizeObj sync = new SyncronizeObj();

public void impl(){

BlackBoxClass bbc = new BlackBoxClass();
   bbc.doSomething();

   if(mResponse == null){
      sync.doWait();
    }

/** at this momoent you sure that you got response from  BlackBoxClass because
  onResponse method released your 'wait'. In other cases if you don't want wait too      
  long (for example wait data from socket) you can use doWait(time) 
*/ 
...

}


@override
public void onResponse(String resp){        
      mResponse = resp;
      sync.doNotify();       
   }

}

You can only call notify on objects where you own their monitor. So you need something like

synchronized(threadObject)
{
   threadObject.notify();
}

notify() needs to be synchronized as well

I'll right simple example show you the right way to use wait and notify in Java. So I'll create two class named ThreadA & ThreadB. ThreadA will call ThreadB.

public class ThreadA {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        ThreadB b = new ThreadB();//<----Create Instance for seconde class
        b.start();//<--------------------Launch thread

        synchronized(b){
            try{
                System.out.println("Waiting for b to complete...");
                b.wait();//<-------------WAIT until the finish thread for class B finish
            }catch(InterruptedException e){
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            System.out.println("Total is: " + b.total);
        }
    }
} 

and for Class ThreadB:

class ThreadB extends Thread{
    int total;
    @Override
    public void run(){
        synchronized(this){
            for(int i=0; i<100 ; i++){
                total += i;
            }
            notify();//<----------------Notify the class wich wait until my    finish 
//and tell that I'm finish
            }
        }
    }