The iterators of the Collection implementations of the Java runtime throw a ConcurrentModificationException[1] when they detect that another thread has modified the Collection while a thread is iterating over it. Such iterators are generally called fail-fast iterators.
Looking at the implementation one can see how this has been made possible. The Collection subclass maintains an integer modCount that is incremented on every operation that structurally modifies the collection (like add, remove, clear). The fail-fast iterators also contain an integer field expectedModCount which is initialized to the modCount while the iterator is created. Later on, during every iteration, the iterator verifies if the expectedModCount is same as the modCount of the collection it is iterating over. A mismatch means that the collection has been modified during the life cycle of the iterator and a ConcurrentModificationException is thrown. The same happens during the collection serialization process. The modification count prior to writing to the stream should be same as the count after writing to the stream.
But is this behavior guaranteed? Are these iterators always fail-fast? I used to think so, until I saw the declaration of the modCount field in the Collection implementations.
The modCount field is not marked as volatile. This would mean - while a thread makes structural changes to the collection and increments the modCount field, the other thread that performs the iteration or serialization might not see the incremented value of the modCount field. It might end up doing a comparison with the stale modCount that is visible to it. This might cause the fail-fast iterators to behave in a different way and failing at a later point. The field is non-volatile in Apache Harmony too.
A bug[2] in Sun Java explains this. It says the modCount was intentionally made non-volatile. Making it volatile would have added contention at every collection modification operation because of the memory fencing that’s required.
Also the Javadoc clearly says “fail-fast behavior cannot be guaranteed as it is, generally speaking, impossible to make any hard guarantees in the presence of unsynchronized concurrent modification”.
This behavior would be the same even on the Synchronized wrapper's of these collections.
References
[1] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/ConcurrentModificationException.html
[2] http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6625725
Looking at the implementation one can see how this has been made possible. The Collection subclass maintains an integer modCount that is incremented on every operation that structurally modifies the collection (like add, remove, clear). The fail-fast iterators also contain an integer field expectedModCount which is initialized to the modCount while the iterator is created. Later on, during every iteration, the iterator verifies if the expectedModCount is same as the modCount of the collection it is iterating over. A mismatch means that the collection has been modified during the life cycle of the iterator and a ConcurrentModificationException is thrown. The same happens during the collection serialization process. The modification count prior to writing to the stream should be same as the count after writing to the stream.
But is this behavior guaranteed? Are these iterators always fail-fast? I used to think so, until I saw the declaration of the modCount field in the Collection implementations.
The modCount field is not marked as volatile. This would mean - while a thread makes structural changes to the collection and increments the modCount field, the other thread that performs the iteration or serialization might not see the incremented value of the modCount field. It might end up doing a comparison with the stale modCount that is visible to it. This might cause the fail-fast iterators to behave in a different way and failing at a later point. The field is non-volatile in Apache Harmony too.
A bug[2] in Sun Java explains this. It says the modCount was intentionally made non-volatile. Making it volatile would have added contention at every collection modification operation because of the memory fencing that’s required.
Also the Javadoc clearly says “fail-fast behavior cannot be guaranteed as it is, generally speaking, impossible to make any hard guarantees in the presence of unsynchronized concurrent modification”.
This behavior would be the same even on the Synchronized wrapper's of these collections.
References
[1] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/ConcurrentModificationException.html
[2] http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6625725
