I've always regarded Java's volatile variables as voodoo variables. In fact, I've been scared off by very many articles telling you how terribly dangerous they are. In cases like these I tend to retreat to the safety of a few good patterns.

Except, I could never find any good patterns for using volatile. Luckily, Brian Goetz has just written an article solving this problem! Go check out Managing volatility.

The patterns are:

• status flags
• one-time safe publication
• independent observations
• the "volatile bean" pattern
• the cheap read-write lock trick

And hey, it's Brian Mr. Concurrency Goetz, so this stuff has to be good!

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