java.util.Timer: Is it deprecated?

Question

I read in a comment to this answer and in many other questions about scheduling (sorry, no references) that java.util.Timer is deprecated. I really hope not since I'm using it as the light way to schedule things in Java (and it works nicely). But if it's deprecated, I'll look elsewhere. However, a quick look at the API docs for 1.6 doesn't say anything about it being deprecated. It's not even mentioned in Sun's Deprecated List.

Is it officially deprecated^* and if so, what should I use instead?

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^* On the other hand, if it's not deprecated, could people stop badmouthing this innocent and brilliantly-implemented set-o-classes?

Answer 1

As others have mentioned, no it is not deprecated but I personally always use ScheduledExecutorService instead as it offers a richer API and more flexibility:

• ScheduledExecutorService allows you to specify the number of threads whereas Timer always uses a single thread.
• ScheduledExecutorService can be constructed with a ThreadFactory allowing control over thread aspects other than the name / daemon status (e.g. priority, ThreadGroup, UncaughtExceptionHandler).
• ScheduledExecutorService allows tasks to be scheduled with fixed delay as well as at a fixed rate.
• ScheduledExecutorService accepts Callable / Runnable as it's unit of work, meaning that you don't need to subclass TimerTask specifically to use it; i.e. you could submit the same Callable implementation to a regular ExecutorService or a ScheduledExecutorService.