让我们只讨论工作示例中的代码。我喜欢russ上面的回答，但为了消除我的疑虑，我稍微加强了一下。我运行了两次，一次工作线程设置为deamon true (deamon线程)，另一次设置为false(用户线程)。它确认守护线程在主线程结束时结束。

public class DeamonThreadTest {

public static void main(String[] args) {

    new WorkerThread(false).start();    //set it to true and false and run twice.

    try {
        Thread.sleep(7500);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        // handle here exception
    }

    System.out.println("Main Thread ending");
    }
   }

   class WorkerThread extends Thread {

    boolean isDeamon;

    public WorkerThread(boolean isDeamon) {
        // When false, (i.e. when it's a user thread),
        // the Worker thread continues to run.
        // When true, (i.e. when it's a daemon thread),
        // the Worker thread terminates when the main
        // thread terminates.
        this.isDeamon = isDeamon;
        setDaemon(isDeamon);
    }

    public void run() {
        System.out.println("I am a " + (isDeamon ? "Deamon Thread" : "User Thread (none-deamon)"));

        int counter = 0;

        while (counter < 10) {
            counter++;
            System.out.println("\tworking from Worker thread " + counter++);

            try {
                sleep(5000);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                // handle exception here
            }
        }
        System.out.println("\tWorker thread ends. ");
    }
}



result when setDeamon(true)
=====================================
I am a Deamon Thread
    working from Worker thread 0
    working from Worker thread 1
Main Thread ending

Process finished with exit code 0


result when setDeamon(false)
=====================================
I am a User Thread (none-deamon)
    working from Worker thread 0
    working from Worker thread 1
Main Thread ending
    working from Worker thread 2
    working from Worker thread 3
    working from Worker thread 4
    working from Worker thread 5
    working from Worker thread 6
    working from Worker thread 7
    working from Worker thread 8
    working from Worker thread 9
    Worker thread ends. 

Process finished with exit code 0

我想澄清一个误解:

Assume that if daemon thread (say B) is created within user thread (say A); then ending of this user thread/parent thread (A) will not end the daemon thread/child thread (B) it has created; provided user thread is the only one currently running. So there is no parent-child relationship on thread ending. All daemon threads (irrespective of where it is created) will end once there is no single live user thread and that causes JVM to terminate. Even this is true for both (parent/child) are daemon threads. If a child thread created from a daemon thread then that is also a daemon thread. This won't need any explicit daemon thread flag setting. Similarly if a child thread created from a user thread then that is also a user thread, if you want to change it, then explicit daemon flag setting is needed before start of that child thread.

守护线程就像一个普通的线程，除了JVM只会在其他非守护线程不存在时关闭。守护进程线程通常用于为应用程序执行服务。

当最后一个非守护进程线程执行完成时，JVM将完成这项工作。默认情况下，JVM将创建一个线程作为非守护进程，但我们可以通过setDaemon(true)方法将线程创建为守护进程。Daemon线程的一个很好的例子是GC线程，它将在所有非Daemon线程完成后立即完成它的工作。

再讲一点(参考:Java并发实践)

当创建一个新线程时，它将继承其守护进程状态 的父母。 当所有非守护进程线程完成时，JVM停止，并放弃所有剩余的守护进程线程: 最后，块不执行， 栈不会被解开——JVM只是退出。 由于这个原因，应该谨慎使用守护线程，将它们用于可能执行任何类型的I/O的任务是危险的。

答案已经有很多了;然而，也许我可以更清楚地解释这一点，因为当我阅读Daemon Threads时，最初，我有一种感觉，我很好地理解了它;然而，在玩了它并调试了一下之后，我发现了一个奇怪的行为。

我被教导:

如果我想让线程在主线程有序完成执行后立即死亡，我应该将其设置为Diamond。

我尝试了什么:

我从主线程中创建了两个线程，我只将其中一个设置为菱形; 在主线程有序完成执行后，那些新创建的线程都没有退出，但我预计，守护线程应该已经退出; 我浏览了许多博客和文章，到目前为止，我找到的最好、最清晰的定义来自《Java并发实践》一书，它非常清楚地指出:

7.4.2守护线程

Sometimes you want to create a thread that performs some helper function but you don’t want the existence of this thread to prevent the JVM from shutting down. This is what daemon threads are for. Threads are divided into two types: normal threads and daemon threads. When the JVM starts up, all the threads it creates (such as garbage collector and other housekeeping threads) are daemon threads, except the main thread. When a new thread is created, it inherits the daemon status of the thread that created it, so by default any threads created by the main thread are also normal threads. Normal threads and daemon threads differ only in what happens when they exit. When a thread exits, the JVM performs an inventory of running threads, and if the only threads that are left are daemon threads, it initiates an orderly shutdown. When the JVM halts, any remaining daemon threads are abandoned— finally blocks are not executed, stacks are not unwound—the JVM just exits. Daemon threads should be used sparingly—few processing activities can be safely abandoned at any time with no cleanup. In particular, it is dangerous to use daemon threads for tasks that might perform any sort of I/O. Daemon threads are best saved for “housekeeping” tasks, such as a background thread that periodically removes expired entries from an in-memory cache.