The JavaTM Tutorial

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Trail: Essential Java Classes
Lesson: Doing Two or More Tasks At Once: Threads

## Customizing a Thread's run Method

> The `run` method gives a thread something to do. Its code implements the thread's running behavior. It can do anything that can be encoded in Java statements: compute a list of prime's, sort some data, perform some animation.

> The `Thread` class implements a generic thread that, by default, does nothing. That is, the implementation of its `run` method is empty. This is not particularly useful, so the `Thread` class defines API that lets a `Runnable` object provide a more interesting `run` method for a thread.

> There are two techniques for providing a run method for a thread:

> - Subclassing `Thread` and Overriding `run`
> - Implementing the `Runnable` Interface

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