.Thread.currentThread().getName() is "" for a virtual thread

[Alan Bateman]

On 17/05/2022 10:25, Lutz Horn wrote:
> Hi,
>
> using non-virutal threads, `Thread.currentThread().getName()` can be 
> used to get the name of the current thread. This has a sensible value 
> for threads managed by, for example, a 
> `Executors.newFixedThreadPool(256)`.
>
> Calling `.getName()` on a virtual thread managed by a 
> `Executors.newVirtualThreadPerTaskExecutor()` returns the empty string 
> "".
>
> Doing without `.getName()` in this szenario, 
> `Thread.currentThread().toString()` returns something like
>
> "VirtualThread[#96]/runnable at ForkJoinPool-1-worker-3"
>
> which is fine but a little long for use cases such as logging.
>
> What is the recommended way to get a short string representation of a 
> virtual thread?
>

Unlike platform threads, virtual threads are specified to not get an 
automatically generated name by default. The String representation has 
the thread identifier (#96 in this case) and its state. Maybe the thread 
identifier is enough for what you are doing?  Note that you can provide 
your own ThreadFactory that names threads if you want.

-Alan.