Thread: Best way avoiding ConcurrentModifications

Hey.

I have a HashMap like this:

HashMap<Player, Integer> players = new HashMap<Player, Integer>();

The int is for the amount of seconds the player has left. Each second one second is removed from the person: (this is inside a thread)

for (final Iterator<Player> it = players.keySet().iterator(); it.hasNext(); ) {
    final Player player = it.next();
 
    if (player.isOnline()) {
        int seconds = getTimeLeft(player);
 
        if (seconds <= 0) {
            if (!(player.isDead())) {
                player.setHealth(0); // This kills the player
            }
        }
 
        setTimeLeft(player, --seconds);
    } else {
        it.remove();
    }
}

If the player has 0 seconds or less, the player is killed and later runs a method to update everything correspondingly. The player can also die naturally, either by another player or from eg. starvation, so thats why I can't necessarily add the check directly to the thread / loop. This is the code which is run when the player dies:

public void playerKilled(Player player) {
        // Some validation before this
        players.remove(player);
        spectators.add(player);
}

The problem with this is that it always throws a ConcurrentModificationException. I changed the HashMap to ConcurrentHashMap and that fixed it, but that forces me add a ton of null checks everywhere and it ends up extremely ugly and occasionally fails for some reason.

So the question is: What would be the best solution to avoid both of these errors while retaining the functionality?

Theres 24 players and I want to report to each of them how much time is left each second. It's a plugin for a game, so if you kill someone you get the time which the other person had, and so on. So that wont work.

Originally Posted by Jergetson

if you kill someone you get the time which the other person had, and so on. So that wont work.

This seems to have nothing to do with time running out. Looks like something more related to combat code where damage numbers are being passed around. When the player is killed, as a last attack, call a method youKilledMe(myTimeLeft) and rather than taking damage, that method bumps the winning players time. Something of this sort or not, still can not see how its related to the cme at hand.
Is it necessary for all of these threads to modify the set?
Why are these threads not modifying the objects within the set instead of the set?
Do dead players have to be removed or can they be ignored prior to lengthy code?
Will new players join before the game is over?
Do all players have the same time remaining?
Is 24 the maximum number of players?
There are many many possible solutions to the problem, the question is which one fits best. The subset of questions above can grow various ways depending on answers to some of them.
Think about what needs to be done when and try to organize the flow with as little concurrency as is necessary.