What is a daemon thread in Java?

Question

Can anybody tell me what daemon threads are in Java?

Answer 1

A daemon thread is a thread that does not prevent the JVM from exiting when the program finishes but the thread is still running. An example for a daemon thread is the garbage collection.

You can use the setDaemon(boolean) method to change the Thread daemon properties before the thread starts.

Answer 2

Daemon thread is like daemon process which is responsible for managing resources,a daemon thread is created by the Java VM to serve the user threads. example updating system for unix,unix is daemon process. child of daemon thread is always daemon thread,so by default daemon is false.you can check thread as daemon or user by using "isDaemon()" method. so daemon thread or daemon process are basically responsible for managing resources. for example when you starting jvm there is garbage collector running that is daemon thread whose priority is 1 that is lowest,which is managing memory. jvm is alive as long as user thread is alive,u can not kill daemon thread.jvm is responsible to kill daemon threads.

Answer 3

Daemon threads are like assistants. Non-Daemon threads are like front performers. Assistants help performers to complete a job. When the job is completed, no help is needed by performers to perform anymore. As no help is needed the assistants leave the place. So when the jobs of Non-Daemon threads is over, Daemon threads march away.

Answer 4

A daemon thread is a thread that is considered doing some tasks in the background like handling requests or various chronjobs that can exist in an application.

When your program only have daemon threads remaining it will exit. That's because usually these threads work together with normal threads and provide background handling of events.

You can specify that a Thread is a daemon one by using setDaemon method, they usually don't exit, neither they are interrupted.. they just stop when application stops.

Answer 5

Daemon threads are as everybody explained, will not constrain JVM to exit, so basically its a happy thread for Application from exit point of view.

Want to add that daemon threads can be used when say I'm providing an API like pushing data to a 3rd party server / or JMS, I might need to aggregate data at the client JVM level and then send to JMS in a separate thread. I can make this thread as daemon thread, if this is not a mandatory data to be pushed to server. This kind of data is like log push / aggregation.

Regards, Manish

Answer 6

One misconception I would like to clarify:

• Assume that if daemon thread (say B) is created within user thread (say A); then ending of this user thread/parent thread (A) will not end the daemon thread/child thread (B) it has created; provided user thread is the only one currently running.
• So there is no parent-child relationship on thread ending. All daemon threads (irrespective of where it is created) will end once there is no single live user thread and that causes JVM to terminate.
• Even this is true for both (parent/child) are daemon threads.
• If a child thread created from a daemon thread then that is also a daemon thread. This won't need any explicit daemon thread flag setting. Similarly if a child thread created from a user thread then that is also a user thread, if you want to change it, then explicit daemon flag setting is needed before start of that child thread.