ThreadLocal value access across different threads

Question

Given that a ThreadLocal variable holds different values for different threads, is it possible to access the value of one ThreadLocal variable from another thread?

I.e. in the example code below, is it possible in t1 to read the value of TLocWrapper.tlint from t2?

public class Example
{
  public static void main (String[] args)
  {
    Tex t1 = new Tex("t1"), t2 = new Tex("t2");
    new Thread(t1).start();
    try
    {
      Thread.sleep(100);
    }
    catch (InterruptedException e)
    {}
    new Thread(t2).start();
    try
    {
      Thread.sleep(1000);
    }
    catch (InterruptedException e)
    {}
    t1.kill = true;
    t2.kill = true;
  }

  private static class Tex implements Runnable
  {
    final String name;
    Tex (String name)
    {
      this.name = name;
    }
    public boolean kill = false;
    public void run ()
    {
      TLocWrapper.get().tlint.set(System.currentTimeMillis());
      while (!kill)
      {
        // read value of tlint from TLocWrapper
        System.out.println(name + ": " + TLocWrapper.get().tlint.get());
      }
    }
  }
}
class TLocWrapper
{
  public ThreadLocal<Long> tlint = new ThreadLocal<Long>();
  static final TLocWrapper self = new TLocWrapper();
  static TLocWrapper get ()
  {
    return self;
  }
  private TLocWrapper () {}
}

Answer 1

Based on the answer of Andrzej Doyle here a full working solution:

ThreadLocal<String> threadLocal = new ThreadLocal<String>();
threadLocal.set("Test"); // do this in otherThread

Thread otherThread = Thread.currentThread(); // get a reference to the otherThread somehow (this is just for demo)

Field field = Thread.class.getDeclaredField("threadLocals");
field.setAccessible(true);
Object map = field.get(otherThread);

Method method = Class.forName("java.lang.ThreadLocal$ThreadLocalMap").getDeclaredMethod("getEntry", ThreadLocal.class);
method.setAccessible(true);
WeakReference entry = (WeakReference) method.invoke(map, threadLocal);

Field valueField = Class.forName("java.lang.ThreadLocal$ThreadLocalMap$Entry").getDeclaredField("value");
valueField.setAccessible(true);
Object value = valueField.get(entry);

System.out.println("value: " + value); // prints: "value: Test"

All the previous comments still apply of course - it's not safe!

But for debugging purposes it might be just what you need - I use it that way.