Java - Thread Safety of a static method

Question

My application processes a bunch of files in parallel and since each file has the date the file was dropped as a part of its name, I use the following method to extract the drop date:

public static Optional<Date> getFileDropDate(String filename) {
        /* Example: my_file-1_20171002.xml */
        if (StringUtils.isEmpty(filename) || !filename.matches(Constants.FILE_DATE_PATTERN)) {
            return Optional.empty();
        }
        String[] segments = filename.split(UNDERSCORE);
        try {
            // Filename definitely ends with _yyyyMMdd.xml as it matches the pattern. Split by underscore, get the last segment and take out the .xml
            return Optional.of(yyyymmdd.parse(segments[segments.length - 1].replace(Constants.XML_EXTENSION, "")));
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            logger.error("Unable to parse filename to find load date");
            return Optional.empty();
        }
    }

While the functionality is pretty solid and my tests are all successful, when I run it in the multi-threaded setup, it fails with date parse exceptions, and the strings that the method tries to parse are totally weird.

For example:

java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "E.21616"
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.readJavaFormatString(FloatingDecimal.java:2043)
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.parseDouble(FloatingDecimal.java:110)
    at java.lang.Double.parseDouble(Double.java:538)
    at java.text.DigitList.getDouble(DigitList.java:169)
    at java.text.DecimalFormat.parse(DecimalFormat.java:2056)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.subParse(SimpleDateFormat.java:2162)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.parse(SimpleDateFormat.java:1514)
    at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:364)
    at mycompany.importer.parser.ParserUtil.getFileDropDate(ParserUtil.java:308)
    at mycompany.dataprocessors.FileProcessor.lambda$importData$2(FileProcessor.java:181)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:184)
    at java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.forEachRemaining(ArrayList.java:1374)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:481)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachTask.compute(ForEachOps.java:291)
    at java.util.concurrent.CountedCompleter.exec(CountedCompleter.java:731)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinTask.doExec(ForkJoinTask.java:289)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool$WorkQueue.runTask(ForkJoinPool.java:1056)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.runWorker(ForkJoinPool.java:1692)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinWorkerThread.run(ForkJoinWorkerThread.java:157)
 2017-10-21 22:11:48.550 [ForkJoinPool.commonPool-worker-2] ERROR a.c.t.m.m.a.m.i.d.FileProcessor - Error in parsing files and building datamap. Feed file is: /files/my_file_1-db_20171016.xml
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "E.21616E2"
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.readJavaFormatString(FloatingDecimal.java:2043)
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.parseDouble(FloatingDecimal.java:110)
    at java.lang.Double.parseDouble(Double.java:538)
    at java.text.DigitList.getDouble(DigitList.java:169)
    at java.text.DecimalFormat.parse(DecimalFormat.java:2056)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.subParse(SimpleDateFormat.java:2162)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.parse(SimpleDateFormat.java:1514)
    at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:364)
    at mycompany.importer.parser.ParserUtil.getFileDropDate(ParserUtil.java:308)
    at mycompany.dataprocessors.FileProcessor.lambda$importData$2(FileProcessor.java:181)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:184)
    at java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.forEachRemaining(ArrayList.java:1374)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:481)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachTask.compute(ForEachOps.java:291)
    at java.util.concurrent.CountedCompleter.exec(CountedCompleter.java:731)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinTask.doExec(ForkJoinTask.java:289)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool$WorkQueue.runTask(ForkJoinPool.java:1056)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.runWorker(ForkJoinPool.java:1692)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinWorkerThread.run(ForkJoinWorkerThread.java:157)
 2017-10-21 22:11:48.550 [ForkJoinPool.commonPool-worker-3] ERROR a.c.t.m.m.a.m.i.d.FileProcessor - Error in parsing files and building datamap. Feed file is: /files/my_file_2-db_20171020.xml
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "20172017E4"
    at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:65)
    at java.lang.Long.parseLong(Long.java:589)
    at java.lang.Long.parseLong(Long.java:631)
    at java.text.DigitList.getLong(DigitList.java:195)
    at java.text.DecimalFormat.parse(DecimalFormat.java:2051)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.subParse(SimpleDateFormat.java:1867)
    at java.text.SimpleDateFormat.parse(SimpleDateFormat.java:1514)
    at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:364)
    at mycompany.importer.parser.ParserUtil.getFileDropDate(ParserUtil.java:308)
    at mycompany.dataprocessors.FileProcessor.lambda$importData$2(FileProcessor.java:181)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachOp$OfRef.accept(ForEachOps.java:184)
    at java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.forEachRemaining(ArrayList.java:1374)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:481)
    at java.util.stream.ForEachOps$ForEachTask.compute(ForEachOps.java:291)
    at java.util.concurrent.CountedCompleter.exec(CountedCompleter.java:731)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinTask.doExec(ForkJoinTask.java:289)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool$WorkQueue.runTask(ForkJoinPool.java:1056)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.runWorker(ForkJoinPool.java:1692)
    at java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinWorkerThread.run(ForkJoinWorkerThread.java:157)

Making the method synchronized solves the problem, but given that this method doesn't use or modify any instance variables (and if it isn't obvious all variables in Constants are public static final), and each thread technically has its own stack of local variables, why would this method not be thread-safe?

Answer 1

The reason is that this yyyymmdd is not thread safe. From the documentation:

Date formats are not synchronized. It is recommended to create separate format instances for each thread. If multiple threads access a format concurrently, it must be synchronized externally.

Don't share a single SimpleDateFormat between threads because it's not thread-safe. Create a new SimpleDateFormat in the method, or use a ThreadLocal, or synchronize all accesses to yyyymmdd, or better, use the java.time classes, which are thread-safe.