Inspecting thread local variables In Java example

I ran into an issue with some Thread Local Variables recently and came up with a quick way to actually see the buggers.

Using reflection you can get a good idea of the TLVs on your current thread.

package threadLocal;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;

public class sandbox {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        Field field1 = Thread.class.getDeclaredField("threadLocals");
        field1.setAccessible(true);
        Object o1 = field1.get(Thread.currentThread());
        Field field2 = o1.getClass().getDeclaredField("table");
        field2.setAccessible(true);
        Object[] o2 = (Object[]) field2.get(o1);
        for (Object temp : o2) {
            if (temp != null) {
                Field field3 = temp.getClass().getDeclaredField("value");
                field3.setAccessible(true);
                Object o3 = field3.get(temp);
                System.out.println(o3);
            }
        }
    }
}

This will print out all the TLVs on your current thread. You can also set them to null or whatever you want with a little more reflection. Particularly by nulling out all the buckets in the Object[] o2.  Thread Local Variables are rarely used responsibly in Java programming. I advise you don't use them unless you really have a rock solid reason to (and even when you think you do, you probably don't). They are often forgotten about and lead to many unintended memory leaks down the line.