Why tasks in Threadpool are not executed following FIFO, Java

Question

I know if queue is full the new task will be executed by a newly created thread in priority according to How to guarantee FIFO execution order in a ThreadPoolExecutor

But I have following test code snippets which min core size = max core size.

public class ThreadPoolFifoTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        Executor ex = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10);
        final List<Integer> l = new LinkedList<Integer>();
        final ReentrantLock lock = new ReentrantLock(true);//fair lock
        for(int i=0;i<10000;i++){
            final int num = i ;
            ex.execute(new Runnable() {//FIFO submit 
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    //here since queue is FIFO, it is easy to consider that somebody should be take the task FIFO and let the thread to run this task
                    //so it easy to consider that this should be fifo to go to here. 
                    //But as a result , it is not.
                    lock.lock();
                    l.add(num);
                    lock.unlock();                 
                }
            });
        }

        Thread.sleep(1000);
        System.out.println(l);
        List<Integer> sortedList= new LinkedList<Integer>(l);
        Collections.sort(sortedList);
        System.out.println(sortedList);
        System.out.println(l.equals(sortedList));//not equals here

    }
}

output:

[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]
false

Since Queue under the thread pool is FIFO, the task should be poll FIFO and run in the thread, so since I am submiting task folloing order 0.1.2.3.4.....999, my l should looks like sorted, but from the output, it is not, doesn't this mean that the execution order is not FIFO? Why not?

What if I need the task to be executed FIFO?

Answer 1

The problem is that thread only take message off in order, but run independently (as threads should) If you want execution in FIFO you should either

• use a single thread as you can't run tasks in parallel anyway.
• use multiple thread but collect the results in the order they were created (not the order they were executed. This is what parallelStream does.

For example

List<Result> results = IntStream.range(0, 10000).parallel()
                                .mapToObject(i -> func(i))
                                .collect(Collector.toList());

This will allow concurrent execution, however the results appear in the original order.

BTW When you sort a LinkedList, it has to turn it into array, sort it and copy it back into the linked list. I suggest using an ArrayList which can be sorted in place.