VarHandle is a reference to a variable, and it provides access to variables under various access modes (such as plain read/write, volatile read/write, and compare-and-swap), similar to the functionality provided by java.util.concurrent.atomic and sun.misc.Unsafe. The variables can be array elements, instance or static fields in a class.
In the below example, we can create a static variable handle.
Example
import java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles; import java.lang.invoke.VarHandle; public class StaticVarHandleTest { static int field; static int[] array = new int[20]; static final VarHandle FIELD, ARRAY; static { try { FIELD = MethodHandles.lookup().in(StaticVarHandleTest.class).findStaticVarHandle(StaticVarHandleTest.class, "field", Integer.TYPE); ARRAY = MethodHandles.arrayElementVarHandle(int[].class); } catch(Exception e) { throw new InternalError(e); } } public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception { int i = (int)FIELD.getVolatile(); System.out.println(i); FIELD.getAndAdd(5); System.out.println(field); System.out.println(ARRAY.getAndAdd(array, 5, 5)); System.out.println(ARRAY.getAndAdd(array, 5, 5)); } }
Output
0 5 0 5