一个信息量更大的问题是，是什么使代码不线程安全——答案是，有四个条件必须成立……想象一下下面的代码(它是机器语言翻译)

totalRequests = totalRequests + 1
MOV EAX, [totalRequests]   // load memory for tot Requests into register
INC EAX                    // update register
MOV [totalRequests], EAX   // store updated value back to memory

The first condition is that there are memory locations that are accessible from more than one thread. Typically, these locations are global/static variables or are heap memory reachable from global/static variables. Each thread gets its own stack frame for function/method scoped local variables, so these local function/method variables, otoh, (which are on the stack) are accessible only from the one thread that owns that stack. The second condition is that there is a property (often called an invariant), which is associated with these shared memory locations, that must be true, or valid, for the program to function correctly. In the above example, the property is that “totalRequests must accurately represent the total number of times any thread has executed any part of the increment statement”. Typically, this invariant property needs to hold true (in this case, totalRequests must hold an accurate count) before an update occurs for the update to be correct. The third condition is that the invariant property does NOT hold during some part of the actual update. (It is transiently invalid or false during some portion of the processing). In this particular case, from the time totalRequests is fetched until the time the updated value is stored, totalRequests does not satisfy the invariant. The fourth and final condition that must occur for a race to happen (and for the code to therefore NOT be "thread-safe") is that another thread must be able to access the shared memory while the invariant is broken, thereby causing inconsistent or incorrect behavior.

线程安全代码是指即使有多个线程同时执行也能正常工作的代码。

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/threadsafe.html

是也不是。

线程安全不仅仅是确保共享数据一次只能被一个线程访问。您必须确保对共享数据的顺序访问，同时避免竞争条件、死锁、活动锁和资源短缺。

当多个线程同时运行时，不可预知的结果并不是线程安全代码的必要条件，但这通常是一种副产品。例如，您可以使用一个共享队列、一个生产者线程和几个消费者线程来设置生产者-消费者方案，并且数据流可能完全可预测。如果你开始引入更多的消费者，你会看到更多随机的结果。

线程安全代码按照指定的方式工作，即使由不同的线程同时输入。这通常意味着，应该不间断地运行的内部数据结构或操作受到保护，不会同时进行不同的修改。

正如其他人所指出的，线程安全意味着如果一段代码同时被多个线程使用，那么它将正常工作。

值得注意的是，这有时是有代价的，计算机时间和更复杂的编码，所以它并不总是可取的。如果一个类只能安全地在一个线程上使用，那么这样做可能会更好。

例如，Java有两个几乎相同的类:StringBuffer和StringBuilder。不同之处在于StringBuffer是线程安全的，因此StringBuffer的单个实例可以同时被多个线程使用。StringBuilder不是线程安全的，它被设计为仅由一个线程构建String的情况下(绝大多数情况下)的高性能替代品。

我喜欢Brian Goetz的Java并发实践中的定义，因为它的全面性

如果一个类在从多个线程访问时行为正确，那么它就是线程安全的，而不管运行时环境对这些线程的执行是如何调度或交错的，并且在调用代码方面没有额外的同步或其他协调。