CS 342 - 2/16/16

Thread work "up to a point" because of Java's single inheritance
  model.

So the interface of Runnable is used as the solution:

class PrimeRun extends ClassX  
     implements Runnable {
         long minPrime;    // data need inside of run()

         PrimeRun(long minPrime) {
             this.minPrime = minPrime;
         }

         public void run() {
             // compute primes larger than minPrime
              . . .
         }
     }
 

To start a runnable class:

 The following code would then create a thread and start it running:

         PrimeRun p = new PrimeRun(143);

         Thread myThread = new Thread(p);


         myThread.start();  

         //  once the Thread gets started, the code will begin
         //    execution in the run() method of the PrimeRun class