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Using Threads and Flyweight pattern together in Java?

I'm new to both multi-threading and using design patterns.
I've some threads using explicit multi-threading and each is suppose to compute the factorial of a number if it hasn't been computed ever by any thread. I'm using Flyweight Pattern for this.
private final long Comp;
private static Map<String, Fact> instances=new HashMap<String, Fact>();
private Fact(long comp) {
Comp=comp;
}
public static Fact getInstance(int num){
String key=String.valueOf(num);
if(!instances.containsKey(key)){
int comp=//calculate factorial of num
instances.put(key, new Fact(comp));
}
return instances.get(key);
}
public long get_Comp(){
return this.Comp;
}
}
public class Th implements Runnable {
// code elited
#Override
public void run() {
//get number and check if it's already in the HashMap, if no,
compute
}
}
If I do so then is it right to say that my Threads Th are computing Factorials?
If I add the computation in Fact (Flyweight) class then does it remain Flyweight, I guess yes.
Any other way of doing what I wish would be highly appreciated as well.

There's a couple of aims you might have here. What to do is dependent on what you are trying to do.
So it seems in this case you are attempting to avoid repeated computation, but that computation is not particularly expensive. You could run into a problem of lock contention. Therefore, to make it thread safe use ThreadLocal<Map<String, Fact>>. Potentially InheritableThreadLocal<Map<String, Fact>> where childValue copies the Map.
Often there are a known set of values that are likely to be common, and you just want these. In that case, compute a Map (or array) during class static initialisation.
If you want the flyweights to be shared between thread and be unique, use ConcurrentHashMap with together with the Map.computeIfAbsent method.
If you want the flyweights to be shared between thread, be unique and you want to make sure you only do the computation once, it gets a bit more difficult. You need to put (if absent) a placeholder into the ConcurrentMap; if the current thread wins replace that with the computed value and notify, otherwise wait for the computation.
Now if you want the flyweights to be garbage collected, you would want WeakHashMap. This cannot be a ConcurrentMap using the Java SE collections which makes it a bit hopeless. You can use good old fashioned locking. Alternatively the value can be a WeakReference<Fact>, but you'll need to manage eviction yourself.
It may be that a strong reference to Fact is only kept intermittently but you don't want it to be recreated too often, in which case you will need SoftReference instead of WeakReference. Indeed WeakHashMap can behave surprisingly, in some circumstances causing performance to drop to unusable after previously working fine.
(Note, in this case your Map would be better keyed on Integer.)

Modify outer object from inside a thread

public void fooAndBar() {
HashMap<Foo, Bar> fooBarMap = new HashMap<>();
CompletionService completionService = new ExecutorCompletionService(exec);
for(int i=0; i<10; i++) {
completionService.submit(new Callable() {
#Override
public Void call() throws Exception {
fooBarMap.put(new Foo(i), new Bar(i));
return null;
}
});
}
}
Is it safe to modify the HashMap inside the Callable?
Should the hashmap be final (or maybe volatile) and if so, why?
Should I use a structure other than HashMap, something like ConcurrentHashMap or SynchronizedMap and why?
I'm trying to grasp java concepts so please bear with me

Is it safe to modify the HashMap inside the Callable?
No. If you are using a threadpool I assume you are planning to have more of those callables running in parallel. Any time an object with mutable state is accessed from more than one thread, that's thread-unsafe. If you write to a thread-unsafe hashmap from two threads simultaneously, its internal structure will be corrupted. If you read from a thread-unsafe hashmap while another thread is writing to it simultaneously, your reading thread will read garbage. This is a very well known and extensively studied situation known as a Race Condition, a description of which would be totally beyond the scope of this answer. For more information, read about Race Condition on Wikipedia or on another question answered back in 2008: Stackoverflow - What is a Race Condition.
Should the hashmap be final (or maybe volatile) and if so, why?
For your purposes it does not need to be final, but it is always a good practice to make final anything that can be made final.
It does not need to be volatile because:
if you were to make it volatile, you would be making the reference to it volatile, but the reference never changes, it is its contents that change, and volatile has nothing to do with those.
the threadpool makes sure that call() will be executed after fooBarMap = new HashMap<>(). (If you are wondering why such a thing could ever be a concern, google for "memory boundary".)
Should I use a structure other than HashMap, something like ConcurrentHashMap or SynchronizedMap and why?
Definitely. Because, as I wrote earlier, any time an object with mutable state is accessed from more than one thread, that's thread-unsafe. And ConcurrentHashMap, SynchronizedMap, synchronize, etc. exist precisely for taking care of thread-unsafe situations.

Hashmap should not be final, as you are modifying it multiple times(from within a for loop).
If you make it final, you may get an error.

Does double-checked locking work with a final Map in Java?

I'm trying to implement a thread-safe Map cache, and I want the cached Strings to be lazily initialized. Here's my first pass at an implementation:
public class ExampleClass {
private static final Map<String, String> CACHED_STRINGS = new HashMap<String, String>();
public String getText(String key) {
String string = CACHED_STRINGS.get(key);
if (string == null) {
synchronized (CACHED_STRINGS) {
string = CACHED_STRINGS.get(key);
if (string == null) {
string = createString();
CACHED_STRINGS.put(key, string);
}
}
}
return string;
}
}
After writing this code, Netbeans warned me about "double-checked locking," so I started researching it. I found The "Double-Checked Locking is Broken" Declaration and read it, but I'm unsure if my implementation falls prey to the issues it mentioned. It seems like all the issues mentioned in the article are related to object instantiation with the new operator within the synchronized block. I'm not using the new operator, and Strings are immutable, so I'm not sure that if the article is relevant to this situation or not. Is this a thread-safe way to cache strings in a HashMap? Does the thread-safety depend on what action is taken in the createString() method?

No it's not correct because the first access is done out side of a sync block.
It's somewhat down to how get and put might be implemented. You must bare in mind that they are not atomic operations.
For example, what if they were implemented like this:
public T get(string key){
Entry e = findEntry(key);
return e.value;
}
public void put(string key, string value){
Entry e = addNewEntry(key);
//danger for get while in-between these lines
e.value = value;
}
private Entry addNewEntry(key){
Entry entry = new Entry(key, ""); //a new entry starts with empty string not null!
addToBuckets(entry); //now it's findable by get
return entry;
}
Now the get might not return null when the put operation is still in progress, and the whole getText method could return the wrong value.
The example is a bit convoluted, but you can see that correct behaviour of your code relies on the inner workings of the map class. That's not good.
And while you can look that code up, you cannot account for compiler, JIT and processor optimisations and inlining which effectively can change the order of operations just like the wacky but correct way I chose to write that map implementation.

Consider use of a concurrent hashmap and the method Map.computeIfAbsent() which takes a function to call to compute a default value if key is absent from the map.
Map<String, String> cache = new ConcurrentHashMap<>( );
cache.computeIfAbsent( "key", key -> "ComputedDefaultValue" );
Javadoc: If the specified key is not already associated with a value, attempts to compute its value using the given mapping function and enters it into this map unless null. The entire method invocation is performed atomically, so the function is applied at most once per key. Some attempted update operations on this map by other threads may be blocked while computation is in progress, so the computation should be short and simple, and must not attempt to update any other mappings of this map.

Non-trivial problem domains:
Concurrency is easy to do and hard to do correctly.
Caching is easy to do and hard to do correctly.
Both are right up there with Encryption in the category of hard to get right without an intimate understanding of the problem domain and its many subtle side effects and behaviors.
Combine them and you get a problem an order of magnitude harder than either one.
This is a non-trivial problem that your naive implementation will not solve in a bug free manner. The HashMap you are using is not going to threadsafe if any accesses are not checked and serialized, it will not be performant and will cause lots of contention that will cause lot of blocking and latency depending on the use.
The proper way to implement a lazy loading cache is to use something like Guava Cache with a Cache Loader it takes care of all the concurrency and cache race conditions for you transparently. A cursory glance through the source code shows how they do it.

No, and ConcurrentHashMap would not help.
Recap: the double check idiom is typically about assigning a new instance to a variable/field; it is broken because the compiler can reorder instructions, meaning the field can be assigned with a partially constructed object.
For your setup, you have a distinct issue: the map.get() is not safe from the put() which may be occurring thus possibly rehashing the table. Using a Concurrent hash map fixes ONLY that but not the risk of a false positive (that you think the map has no entry but it is actually being made). The issue is not so much a partially constructed object but the duplication of work.
As for the avoidable guava cacheloader: this is just a lazy-init callback that you give to the map so it can create the object if missing. This is essentially the same as putting all the 'if null' code inside the lock, which is certainly NOT going to be faster than good old direct synchronization. (The only times it makes sense to use a cacheloader is for pluggin-in a factory of such missing objects while you are passing the map to classes who don't know how to make missing objects and don't want to be told how).

Is this code multi-thread safe?

private static Map<Integer, String> map = null;
public static String getString(int parameter){
if(map == null){
map = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
//map gets filled here...
}
return map.get(parameter);
}
Is that code unsafe as multithreading goes?

As mentioned, it's definitely not safe. If the contents of the map are not based on the parameter in getString(), then you would be better served by initializing the map as a static initializer as follows:
private static final Map<Integer, String> MAP = new HashMap<Integer,String>();
static {
// Populate map here
}
The above code gets called once, when the class is loaded. It's completely thread safe (although future modification to the map are not).
Are you trying to lazy load it for performance reasons? If so, this is much safer:
private static Map<Integer, String> map = null;
public synchronized static String getString(int parameter){
if(map == null){
map = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
//map gets filled here...
}
return map.get(parameter);
}
Using the synchronized keyword will make sure that only a single thread can execute the method at any one time, and that changes to the map reference are always propagated.
If you're asking this question, I recommend reading "Java Concurrency in Practice".

Race condition? Possibly.
If map is null, and two threads check if (map == null) at the same time, each would allocate a separate map. This may or may not be a problem, depending mainly on whether map is invariant. Even if the map is invariant, the cost of populating the map may also become an issue.
Memory leak? No.
The garbage collector will do its job correctly regardless of the race condition.

You do run the risk of initializing map twice in a multi-threaded scenario.
In a managed language, the garbage collector will eventually dispose of the no-longer-referenced instance. In an unmanaged language, you will never free the memory allocated for the overwritten map.
Either way, initialization should be properly protected so that multiple threads do not run initialization code at the same time.
One reason: The first thread could be in the middle of initializing the HashMap, while a second thread comes a long, sees that map is not null, and merrily tries to use the partially-initialized data structure.

It is unsafe in multithreading case due to race condition.
But do you really need the lazy initialization for the map? If the map is going to be used anyway, seems you could just do eager initialization for it..

The above code isn't thread-safe, as others have mentioned, your map can be initialized twice. You may be tempted to try and fix the above code by adding some synchronization, this is known as "double checked locking", Here is an article that describes the problems with this approach, as well as some potential fixes.
The simplest solution is to make the field a static field in a separate class:
class HelperSingleton {
static Helper singleton = new Helper();
}
it can also be fixed using the volatile keyword, as described in Bill Pugh's article.

No, this code is not safe for use by multiple threads.
There is a race condition in the initialization of the map. For example, multiple threads could initialize the map simultaneously and clobber each others' writes.
There are no memory barriers to ensure that modifications made by a thread are visible to other threads. For example, each thread could use its own copy of the map because they never "see" the values written by another thread.
There is no atomicity to ensure that invariants are preserved as the map is accessed concurrently. For example, a thread that's performing a get() operation could get into an infinite loop because another thread rehashed the buckets during a simultaneous put() operation.

If you are using Java 6, use ConcurrentHashMap
ConcurrentHashMap JavaDoc

correct synchronization of a map object created in the main thread and passed onto new threads

I'm trying to develop a program that takes requests for data which is stored in a map. The map is declared in the main method as shown below:
Map m = Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap());
synchronized(m) {
while (listening) {
new BrokerLookupServerHandlerThread(serverSocket.accept(), m).start();
}
}
The code for the BrokerLookupServerHandlerThread takes the input and makes it one of the object's variables. If I use it in this class, will the original map be updated as well? I understand that Java is pass by value, (I'm used to C/C++) so I just wanted to be sure if this implementation of a synchronized object makes sense.
private Socket socket = null;
//private String t ="MSFT";
public Map m;
public BrokerLookupServerHandlerThread(Socket socket, Map m) {
super("NamingServerHandlerThread");
this.socket = socket;
this.m = m;
System.out.println("Created new Thread to handle client");
}
Thanks for your help.

Yes original object will be updated. I suggest you use ConcurrentHashMap though.
A hash table supporting full
concurrency of retrievals and
adjustable expected concurrency for
updates. This class obeys the same
functional specification as Hashtable,
and includes versions of methods
corresponding to each method of
Hashtable. However, even though all
operations are thread-safe,
retrieval operations do not entail locking, and there is not any
support for locking the entire table
in a way that prevents all access.
This class is fully interoperable with
Hashtable in programs that rely on its
thread safety but not on its
synchronization details.

Yes, changes made to the map will be seen by both threads.
Java does indeed use pass by value - but the value in this case is a reference (similar to a pointer). The value of a reference-type variable in Java is always a reference to an object, or null. It's never the object itself.
So your code won't create a new map. There are very few operations which implicitly create a new object. I can only think of the use of string literals (where the literals are interned anyway) and autoboxing of primitive types. Other than that, you'll only get a new object via the new operator. (Obviously any method you call could create a new object too...)
Note that this is entirely separate to the issue of synchronization between threads. The business about copying objects vs copying references is orthogonal to threading. In this case it looks like you've solved the threading aspect using Collections.synchronizedMap; as Pangea says you may want to use ConcurrentHashMap instead which won't use nearly as much locking (if any). Another implementation of the ConcurrentMap interface is ConcurrentSkipListMap. Look at the docs for both classes to decide what suits you best.