release read lock before acquiring write lock rwl.readLock().unlock(); rwl.writeLock().lock(); // Recheck state because another thread might have acquired // write lock and changed state before we did. if (!cacheValid) { data = ... cacheValid = true; } // Downgrade by acquiring read lock before releasing write lock rwl.readLock().lock(); rwl.writeLock().unlock(); // Unlock write, still hold read } use(data); rwl.readLock().unlock(); } } ReentrantReadWriteLocks can be used to improve concurrency in some uses of some kinds of Collections. This is typically worthwhile only when the collections are expected to be large, accessed by more reader threads than writer threads, and entail operations with overhead that outweighs synchronization overhead. For example, here is a class using a TreeMap that is expected to be large and concurrently accessed.
class RWDictionary { private final Map<String, Data> m = new TreeMap<String, Data>(); private final ReentrantReadWriteLock rwl = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); private final Lock r = rwl.readLock(); private final Lock w = rwl.writeLock(); public Data get(String key) { r.lock(); try { return m.get(key); } finally { r.unlock(); } } public String[] allKeys() { r.lock(); try { return m.keySet().toArray(); } finally { r.unlock(); } } public Data put(String key, Data value) { w.lock(); try { return m.put(key, value); } finally { w.unlock(); } } public void clear() { w.lock(); try { m.clear(); } finally { w.unlock(); } } } Implementation Notes
This lock supports a maximum of 65535 recursive write locks and 65535 read locks. Attempts to exceed these limits result in {@link Error} throws from locking methods.
@since 1.5
@author Doug Lea