Java synchronized references

I have a class A and B.

public class A() { 
    private static List<int> list = new ArrayList<int>(); 
    public static List<int> getList() {
        return list;
    }
}

public class B() { 
    public void foo() {
        synchronized(A.getList()) {
            // DO Stuff
        }
    }
}

In class B where I synchronize. Does this synchronize on A's list, or on B's r开发者_JAVA百科eference to A's list. I think it is the latter but could use some help.

If so then how do I accomplish a similar thing to this that will actually work?

Thanks!

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It synchronizes on A's list. What do you mean by B's reference to A's list? It doesn't matter if you're in A using list or B using A.getList(), they both reference the same object. When you synchronize on it you'll block other threads from synchronizing on that same object, regardless of where it's referenced from.

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The OP followed up with this comment:

What's weird is the behavior that I am seeing is that if I lock from within A I can actually lock it at the same time in B. Which pretty much means the synchronized has no effect. Which is why I surmised that maybe locking a reference won't work.

That can't happen with the code in the question.

But it could happen if there was a setList method in A that updated the list variable. You could then end up in a situation where the two threads were locking on different objects.

Another possibility is that you actually only have one thread that is taking a lock on the same object twice. That's normal behavior. Java primitive mutexes are reentrant; i.e. they only prevent two different threads from holding the same mutex at the same time.