Avoid Calling Thread.destroy()

ID

java.thread_destroy_removed

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Efficiency

Language

Java

Tags

best-practice, concurrency

Description

Reports calls to Thread.destroy(). This method has been deprecated since its introduction and was removed in later JDK versions.

Rationale

Thread.destroy() was intended to forcefully destroy a thread without releasing any monitors it held. This could leave shared data structures in an inconsistent state and cause deadlocks. The method was never implemented in most JVMs and throws UnsupportedOperationException or NoSuchMethodError in modern JDKs.

// Bad -- deprecated/removed API
thread.destroy();

Remediation

Use cooperative thread termination via interrupt() and check isInterrupted() in the thread’s work loop:

// Good -- cooperative interruption
thread.interrupt();

References