The thread life cycle contains five clear states: 1. New state: The thread is created but has not started yet and does not consume CPU resources; 2. Runnable state: The thread has been started and waited or is executing, which is determined by the scheduler; 3. Blocked/Waiting/Timed Waiting: The thread does not execute due to locking, infinite waiting or timeout waiting, but it still survives; 4. Terminated state: The thread enters this state after completing the task or exits abnormally and cannot be restarted; 5. During the entire life cycle, the thread states are converted in sequence. Understanding these states helps to avoid deadlocks and resource competition issues.
A thread's lifecycle might sound complicated, but it's actually pretty straightforward once you break it down. In short, a thread goes through several well-defined states from the moment it's created until it's no longer running.
Here's how it typically works:
New – When the thread is born
When you create a new Thread
object in Java (or equivalent in other languages), it's in the new state. At this point, the thread exists, but it hasn't started yet. It doesn't consume CPU time here because it hasn't been scheduled to run.
For example:
Thread myThread = new Thread(() -> System.out.println("Running"));
This thread is in the new state. Nothing runs yet — not even the code inside the run()
method.
Key thing to remember:
- You can't restart a thread once it's left this state.
- Only one method can be called here:
.start()
Runnable – Ready or actively running
Once you call .start()
, the thread moves into the runnable state. This means it's eligible to run — either it's currently executing or waiting for its turn on the CPU.
It depends on the thread scheduler , which decides when each thread gets CPU time. So even if your thread is technically "running", it might just be waiting in line behind others.
Some things that keep a thread in this state:
- The thread is actively doing work
- It's paused briefly by the system to let other threads run
- It's waiting for I/O (but not blocked — more on that later)
Blocked / Waiting / Timed Waiting – Not running, but still alive
These are all variations of non-running states where the thread isn't executing code, but hasn't finished either.
- Blocked : Waiting for a monitor lock (like when entering a synchronized block)
- Waiting : Waiting indefinitely for another thread to do something (eg,
wait()
,join()
) - Timed Waiting : Same as waiting, but with a timeout (like
sleep()
, or timedwait()
)
In these states, the thread is still considered alive but not consuming CPU cycles.
Terminated – All done
The thread reaches the terminated (or dead ) state when:
- Its
run()
method finishes normally - An uncaught exception causes it to crash
Once a thread is dead, it stays dead. You can't restart it. Calling .start()
again will throw an exception.
Also, there's no guaranteed way to force-stop a thread externally — which is why we often use flags like isRunning = false
to signal it to stop gracefully.
That's basically how a thread moves through its life. Each state has its own role and behavior, and understanding them helps avoid common pitfalls like deadlock, race conditions, or trying to reuse a thread after it's finished.
The above is the detailed content of What is the lifecycle of a thread?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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